A timeless dialogue between love and the loved, or is it spirit and soul, or woman and man, or angelic and human, or forgiver and transgressor, or wise Sophia and turbulent Psyche…

♂ she called him sweet bird
and reminded it with a whisper
softer than the secret spot he kissed
under the copper curls behind her neck
clemency, purest, stirs only in radical hearts
see how true light bears no ego
waiting with such sweetness
it hides in plainest view
and blinds the merely opportune
with its kind and sure audacity
and who cannot notice this gift
full benevolence in the moments
must pay in grievous keenness
in their very sculpting
of a subsequent biography

♀ winterlong encased stillness love
stayed the dark and the cold
I watched them from my window
brave little nodes of being
braver still now clothed in buds
unseal their love and peril
in their master’s warmth
and my love for you
not unlike these flowers
anchored in promise
fearful to unfold
yet unfurled in couraged hope
ajar for your love warmth
for our path together
a gift unasked for
presented in devotion

♂ already, without your garments
I’ve swallowed your sun
write it down for loving
in the book of deeds forever
what through your mind’s loins moan
song of deep yearning
straining to glisten
and can you not surmise now
through this thickening veil of weeping
how each committed indiscretion
was naught but fumbled wanting
for that selfsame union
you proclaim gracefully
while I can only mimic
for certainly the inner path
implies flirting with one’s pathology

♀ eat the karma, for you could not listen
eat the karma, your lusts formed your earwax
take this meal with resoluteness
you believed yourself healed too quickly
eat this sacrament while yet you have
sensing lips, working teeth,
and organs for earthwise digestion
savor the shame of realizing
the enormity of that gift
squandered
— too late now to acknowledge
— for all times have their whiles
and after the solemnity
of your private Gethsemane
turn your considerations
to these sacred foothills
which were once so familiar
die to youself
lest your next life kills you
firmly stepping one foot aft the other
up the narrowed slopes of trueness
to your appointed Golgotha

♂ speak me then
you dancer whose steps must elude me
some words of consolation
anoint me my naked journey
bereft of your dew and air
your beauty consigned to my mind’s eye
that I might gasp
the occasional breathing
of remembered companionship
that I transport your wound
I inflicted so careless
in my deepest holiest jewel case

♀ follow your spirit, sweet bird
it grows weary of following you.