Forever
Memory, like a root in darkness,
piercing light with its stem has found me.
Ordering my world
like architecture of feelings
bound to you,
held for you as shields of hope.
In the dispersion of love,
identical throbbing
has been our call
answered in the sweetest caress two can share.
And you wonder if ecstasy will diminish us
like rain the sun or
wind the calm.
When we know one another
in the deepest channel of our hearts
we can only utter one word
cast from this stone’s mind: forever.
Forever.
When winter calls my name
in the highest desert of light,
I will not despair because I know you
in the deepest channel of my heart
where I understand the word, forever.
Instantly healed by your caressing lips
that unmasks all that has tortured me.
The panting of mouths
tired but astir in passion’s flame
can only cease when I have entered you
forever.
I carry you in this flame,
emerald-colored from my dreams of you
beneath the trees within
where your beauty consumed the sun
and snared my soul so completely.
I cannot truly know you apart from a throne.
Spirits made to shine beyond the din
of boorish poets
that strike flint below water and cry without passion.
I have known you forever in lonely streets
and the thundered plain.
In wilted villages and cool mountain terraces.
I have watched all of you
torn open to me speaking like a river
that moves on forever.
And I have waited
like the greedy mouth of an ocean
drawing you nearer to my lips
so I can know you forever
as you empty into me abandoned of all fear.<
Of Luminous Things
Of luminous things I have so little experience
that I often think myself small.
Yet when I think of you and your luminous ways
my being swells with hope and prayers
that you will permit the flames to grow.
In mercy, we are torn apart into separate worlds
to find ourselves over and over
a thousand times aching for the other half.
To dream of nothing but the One between us.
Of luminous things I have squandered none
nor have I held them to my heart and asked them
to dissolve into me.
Yet when I think of you, I desire only this.
And if you disrobed your Self and watched it
watch you, you would see me as clearly as I am.
Not small and unworthy.
Unafraid of fear.
Not uncertain like empty space.
But luminous like white light before the prism.
In my thoughts I hold your heart
sculpting away the needless
for the essence.
And when I find it
I will hold it to my heart and ask it
to dissolve into me.
I will know of luminous things
that hurtle through time
bringing us the uncharted, unfathomable
desire we have never spoken.
Words are not curious enough to say their names.
Only love can weep their identity,
and I am so perfectly defenseless to its music.