II.

"Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,
absentminded. Someone sober
will worry about events going badly.
Let the lover be." -Rumi.


We can find each other under swathes of nightshade
We can bathe in the salt waters of the tempest that
sometimes threatens to cover us completely
but we rise above the surface of the waves
and sleep in the shadow of the light of the moon
until at last, I can swim you back to shore on my back,
and even if I flounder, you breathe into me new resolve;
the promise is not of a smooth passage, only a safe landing
and the sand on our feet : this is the gift of the holy to us.



We have yet to convince this world that we are not
as reckless as we know ourselves to be
when we have caught fire in one another's arms,
that this kind of love is not unfettered as it is true,
when convincing ourselves has been the proven wizardry,
a matter of striking flint repeatedly in the dark,
the patient but sometimes frantic desire to keep
the blaze alive, when it rages on behind this veneer
we keep in front of our eyes : I've seen it on cold nights
when you throw your love upon me, when you ache
and beg me to let you keep me warm again tonight.


I've wandered into the corridors of your past, down crooked
paths, through magical forests, straits & narrows
putting photographs together to rebuild your worlds,
imagined and assumed, while you delve down streets
and alleyways where I once tried to lose myself forever,
but could find nothing but sleep and an itch
to throw myself again headlong onto avenues of mystery,
broken homes & broken lives, to see how unlike they were to mine.
I am even sure that you will allow me to see all the rivers,
valleys, mansions, and moors that you've known in younger times,


I am sure that we will sail upon the sea, your hair flickering
across your face, branches of brown in the wind;
that there will be an island and a road through this island,
there will be thousands and millions of grains of sand,
that our hearts & lungs will be filled with the sea,
that we will eat from the fishes of the water and
you and I will be lovely, if we want these things,
if what we tell each other in the night and in the late
autumn afternoon when the sun gets low, and you come
to my arms, silently, for sleep, for rest, and I love you then
as I love you now; you are always with me, even
when in the evening moon, I cannot be with you.



I hear you, I smell you, telling me how like the sun,
the moon, the stars I seem to be, this is my gift
to you, that I want to remain these things, as long
as I can write these things, as long I can love you & say these things.

XOXOXOOXXO.