When i was a locked treasure chest
Love poured in through the keyhole
A cold lake cupped by a leafless forest
It laughed with each breath i drew
And i trembled with each longed-for kiss It stole
Love scurried off with the father in me
To the half-filled shelves of my soul
A derelict father to my daughter and son
It filled the rest of me with fine red wine
While i thirsted for mercy to console
Love smuggled me into the taverns of Anatolia
Left me in a temple on a verdant mount in Korea
Walked tent to castle with me, leaping into my camera
She blinded me with Her brilliant sable eyes
In the Old City alleys of warm Cartagena
Oh, how those eyes suspend the stars
Moon-melt laid on her soft-pressed lips
Low and glowing like a lantern in a shadow
In the jholi of her gathered-up blouse
she carries blüescent petals of wild Hyacinth
Love built driftwood bridges
From the fallen pines along Cannon Beach
We strolled as silhouettes on rippling water
Spanning the gaps between distant couplets
Placing heaven within the poet’s reach
Love filled my shoes with Its gritty sand
Trekking the Sonoran desert river bed
It traded my innocence for a bar tab in Texas
Flashing the winning poker hand It dealt
Through surgeons who cut the hurt from my head
Like a midnight train in a whistle-stop town
Love comes and goes, never really slowing down
i fought it off with teeth, spit, and poetry
Learning to duck the swing of my father’s hand
Never stepping up to return the delivery
Love buried Its diamonds and gold
In the heart of a girl i admired
Reminding me of an old, old friend
her mouth curling with recollection
Seeing me as the boy she found again
We went driving west in my Gran Torino
A reluctant soldier, aspiring scholar
Love pressed Its foot on the gas
Streetlights and road signs falling behind
We sped through the fields of my scrapbook past
Love is a storm churning slowly toward me
Swallowing the sun, sky-blue and black
Revealing that all i’d hoped i held
Was just a bucket, strong rope and pulley
Now, i gaze into Her depths – a freshwater well.
This poem is the prologue and epilogue to your oeuvre!
dear anonymous – thank you… drawing water borrows fragments from the art of living, less so writing. There are gaps, big ones, and all along the journey of writing this, there was an increasing awareness of the volume and importance of everything and everyone who inspired it. But if you know my work at all, I am drawing connections between the formed and formless – not because I am an expert in their comparisons and contrasts, but that I often lose my way and must ponder…for example, you are Anon, yet I write to you with familiarity, but still as anon, you are formless to my knowing. And I could just as well give you form through imagination or recollection. But more importantly, Anon follows me like a star at night, I do not follow it. What is unsaid, unwritten… unknown, even, is all we reliably have to look forward to… Perhaps then, you are not anonymous at all, but rather, inevitable.