First Love Poem
In Your Face
In the long liminal lag
between waking and sleep, I learned you
by heart, not touch,
as in the school of the night
where the horned moon flashes,
behind a rooftop; its warning: that the reaping
of the light will follow.
With the sun rising on your forehead,
your arms, brown like the heartwood of the logs
you carried for the her of your story,
carried so that in times to come,
the love that you had spent, spired in,
would spark out, ignite those of the future
who had come merely
to warm themselves,
but would leave burning as brightly
as your two breasts, chests
apricotting like embers.
Now your skin is lightning, dawning
in my eyes, a fused fire in your grained hair, beard, one leg bare.
You are forested with colors.
"I am the woods." you'd said, embodying not just one
but all trees, with their/your multi versed voiced
leaving, quick as your eyelid fluttering, shut, opens again.
Full of morning, you leap toward it.
From the distance of me,
I tasted what was left of you on my skin,
smelled your out-breath as you slept
with unremembered dreams because you
believed your life was the dream,
loving you because awake you are the dream,
grace handed, to me.
"There is no me," you said, "only spirit. What does spirit want you to give me/us?"
And the hour I spent covering you,
was too quick for my touch and taste.
We were tired, but I could give that much to the points of your eyelashes, a week to the blades of your shoulders.
"Our bones are becoming like the dolphins-- whatever that means," You told me.
And I mused, "They speak telepathically, don't they?"
Their bones don't have to bear the weight of trying to keep up.
In the dawn bed, as I valley your mountain,
I would remove my rib and make you
a song, image to you, from the new skeletone,
the seeds of dreams,
becoming lighter and lighter,
so I was not even behinder
while you bound ahead, through rock falls and river beds,
until even the sound of your shadow is gone,
only my wish remaining:
Return again like a brown gold bird dog.
See if I still exist on the earth,
while you plane the sky, shave the rough spots from clouds.
Bring me back a bird of paradise
in your mouth where I would spend a month.
Waiting for you,
I had built a nest
of grass in your backyard,
so as not to build one in you.
After our time was done,
I found another, mud round,
laced with tinsel,
timed for me, under a tree.
In the long liminal lag
between waking and sleep, I learned you
by heart, not touch,
as in the school of the night
where the horned moon flashes,
behind a rooftop; its warning: that the reaping
of the light will follow.
With the sun rising on your forehead,
your arms, brown like the heartwood of the logs
you carried for the her of your story,
carried so that in times to come,
the love that you had spent, spired in,
would spark out, ignite those of the future
who had come merely
to warm themselves,
but would leave burning as brightly
as your two breasts, chests
apricotting like embers.
Now your skin is lightning, dawning
in my eyes, a fused fire in your grained hair, beard, one leg bare.
You are forested with colors.
"I am the woods." you'd said, embodying not just one
but all trees, with their/your multi versed voiced
leaving, quick as your eyelid fluttering, shut, opens again.
Full of morning, you leap toward it.
From the distance of me,
I tasted what was left of you on my skin,
smelled your out-breath as you slept
with unremembered dreams because you
believed your life was the dream,
loving you because awake you are the dream,
grace handed, to me.
"There is no me," you said, "only spirit. What does spirit want you to give me/us?"
And the hour I spent covering you,
was too quick for my touch and taste.
We were tired, but I could give that much to the points of your eyelashes, a week to the blades of your shoulders.
"Our bones are becoming like the dolphins-- whatever that means," You told me.
And I mused, "They speak telepathically, don't they?"
Their bones don't have to bear the weight of trying to keep up.
In the dawn bed, as I valley your mountain,
I would remove my rib and make you
a song, image to you, from the new skeletone,
the seeds of dreams,
becoming lighter and lighter,
so I was not even behinder
while you bound ahead, through rock falls and river beds,
until even the sound of your shadow is gone,
only my wish remaining:
Return again like a brown gold bird dog.
See if I still exist on the earth,
while you plane the sky, shave the rough spots from clouds.
Bring me back a bird of paradise
in your mouth where I would spend a month.
Waiting for you,
I had built a nest
of grass in your backyard,
so as not to build one in you.
After our time was done,
I found another, mud round,
laced with tinsel,
timed for me, under a tree.