the taste of love –

the place where there are no gifts,
the moment where there are no words,
the location of loss
and the parallel of joy,
here is where love at last rests.

I have watched a decade,
both empty of you and full,
skip before me like ribbon down a stairwell,
and I know that I have learned nothing
and learned it a million times.

I know that there is no way to pinpoint
and that definition is something best left for scholars
far brighter than I.
I know that I am quicksilver and that you are stone;
that you are the wind and I am stone;
that the world changes with an utterance,
and in a day is made unwhole.

how interwoven are we,
like fingers into fists?
or are we drawn along a skein more silken,
expected to form a mantilla for shelter, a coverlet for night?

I hear sentences in the air,
and I close my eyes and reach for the ground,  to find you, where you are not listening.
and I am thankful for your earth rich constancy,
for your orbital pull upon my corpse,
and your visceral pull on my soul.

I do not deserve, but I demand.  and you will provide,
unable to resist the potion or the poison,
mead of my lips and my mind,
biting and dark, saplike and viscous, tender as night,
spilled upon a page or a sheet or a parchment or sand.
it matters not which age.

you will be there.

at this point so relative, where hands are taken off
the clock,
I shake, I breathe, I release, I void,
for we are going to be here awhile.



LS
02.14.02