The Swimmer

Forgive my searching for you
so clumsily,
inside you.
Forgive my hurting you at times.
I want to extract
from you your better you.
The one that you didn't see in yourself and that I see:
swimmer in your most precious depths.
And to catch it
and hold it up high,
as a tree holds the last light
it has found in the sun.
And then you'd come
in search of it, high overhead.
To reach it,
you'd be lifted above yourself, the way I love you,
touching your past
only with the tips of your toes,
your body straining, rising now
from you to yourself.

And let my love be answered
by the newborn person you are.

Quietude

I live and breathe love's deep reverie,
bringing heart's passion into flower.
I am what you feel; yet, cannot see,
one small drop in a pouring shower.

I alter the shape of everything,
silent waters of a moving stream.
I am hands of winter, kiss of spring,
the fair-ripening fruit of your dream.

I come like a spirit lightly bound,
my footsteps echoing down the hall,
crossing the locus of the damp ground -
one more black shadow against the wall.

Do not think on me then open eyes,
for one breath, one hope, one sight of me.
I shall not be with you when you rise,
having shrunk so small inside of thee.

Embrace the silence of starry sphere,
of the blue winds and the things they speak.
Grasp the meaning of why you are here -
the hands of clarity which you seek.

The answers are hidden like a light
within the tropic trance of your mind.
All eternity is shining bright
if you would but leave the past behind.

Good-bye

I paint my lips crimson
and think:
how they bleed like my heart.

A tear,
and I am drowning.
My eyes a blue river
drifting.

The sunlight,
blinding with its reflection
of a lost love.

My heart,
a stone
that I throw into the sea.

The impact,
the waves flood the world.

And I,
am drenched -
soaking wet -
standing like a statue.

I look to the west
and see him holding her on the veranda.

My soul,
empty hands of nothing
now reaching for you.