It is true; I have heard the love songs
of formless longing for form,
of essence longing for breath
and life longing for birth.
My own life has been an echo of cosmic union.
I’ve danced the subtlest melody of courtship with ever deepening self
and a wordless longing for no more than divine unfolding
cradled always by the intimate peal of the sutras.
I have been Shiva, I have been Shakti. And both I can never not be.
The map written for me is the same etched on the face of every soul.
I have met you here before, on the singular path of infinite celestial polynomes.
with eternal mind galloping through our every manifestation and choice.
We were once of the same constellation, gazing at each other from across the galaxy
upholding a seemingly singular Universe. Until a new one unfolded.
You became the zenith to my valley, and then I the fog hugging your foothills.
I was the plum you once ate. And the mother of your cubs.
I have known of the eternal realm of love,
it has even lulled me awake at night whispering secrets into the ears of the unborn,
kept scraps of my soul hanging on through the darkest of days
and mortared my poetic vision to a muse I had not yet met.
Even on my deathbed, I kept long-beaded mantras of faith wrapped about my neck
tightening karmic strands one by one into flesh of cosmic confusion, desire, and despair
blindly endowing my own fitful engagement to the legibility of future seekers
whose minds today eagerly read the last notes from my skin.
It is true that I may be possessed by the madness
of unremittingly falling in love with the transience of the moment, any moment
of instinctually despooling the farces of trend and order
and knowing ecstasy to be the brightest umbrage echoing inside each breath.
Yet I certainly did not know the flesh of eternity
until I tasted your face.
Until I unraveled my tightly held expressions of affection
into new forms of poetry.
It is not an easy truth to settle into,
as the bliss of true aloneness has been good to me.
As with all rites of passage, the recognition has destabilized me.
The more vast heart becomes, the faster mind unreels.
And the sooner sanity becomes the last measure of bondage.
We can move into anything with our eyes closed
but choosing love over loss frees even the sleepiest nightingale
from her silent burden.
Now that the cage door to my soul has been torn off,
I cannot look away from your face. It could be that I do not dare. But I do.
Every day I dare look at the simmering fragility of the world as is
and find the ocean of my sight pours relentlessly through your love.
Photograph by Tom Clark
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