More Than Spring
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
-- Pablo Neruda
To hold you in sacred security
To kiss away your dread
With slow fingers
Pliant hands
And teeth like fallen saints
Muttering apocrypha and blasphemy
As they graze your hollows
To plunge you into a land of
Cry and sky
Heat and noise
Succulence surfacing
On your face
All semblance abraded
By that which brings
Your breath short
Your heart fast
And your eyes wide
To hold you there
In that wordless sound
Upright and singing
Cresting the sky
Where black space meets blue air
For as long as you can breathe
That is my will
My power
My glory
That is why I love you
That is how I want you
I am the place of safety
Where the greatest risks
Can be taken
The place of refuge where
Your raw throat can cry out
Unbidden and unrepentant
Conquer your fear
Make it rue the day it took you prisoner
Tear it
Limb from limb
As I take you
Make you
Slake you
Drink of me – all of me
Take of my sinew and silence
Take my ruthless strength
And tender patience
Take my braying call and
Ride that rough sound down
To your own smooth siren
And let them both
Ring into your belly
Like a bell that has no end
No - Not your spring alone
But your summer as well
Iron heat and charged light
Thundered all around
With sweat raining down upon you
Your fall
Colors overbrimming your eyes
Through the bittersweet
Lengthening of evening
Moving slowly through
To the hesitancy of morning
My light
Coming slyly through the window
To rouse you with a whisper
Where once I trumpeted glory
Your winter
Downy and muffled
Adrift in a warm bundle
Arms fingers thighs slack
Bones unfused and sprung
In your time of after
Holding you with slow breath
While you await
Spring’s limbic call
To bud once more
-- Pablo Neruda
To hold you in sacred security
To kiss away your dread
With slow fingers
Pliant hands
And teeth like fallen saints
Muttering apocrypha and blasphemy
As they graze your hollows
To plunge you into a land of
Cry and sky
Heat and noise
Succulence surfacing
On your face
All semblance abraded
By that which brings
Your breath short
Your heart fast
And your eyes wide
To hold you there
In that wordless sound
Upright and singing
Cresting the sky
Where black space meets blue air
For as long as you can breathe
That is my will
My power
My glory
That is why I love you
That is how I want you
I am the place of safety
Where the greatest risks
Can be taken
The place of refuge where
Your raw throat can cry out
Unbidden and unrepentant
Conquer your fear
Make it rue the day it took you prisoner
Tear it
Limb from limb
As I take you
Make you
Slake you
Drink of me – all of me
Take of my sinew and silence
Take my ruthless strength
And tender patience
Take my braying call and
Ride that rough sound down
To your own smooth siren
And let them both
Ring into your belly
Like a bell that has no end
No - Not your spring alone
But your summer as well
Iron heat and charged light
Thundered all around
With sweat raining down upon you
Your fall
Colors overbrimming your eyes
Through the bittersweet
Lengthening of evening
Moving slowly through
To the hesitancy of morning
My light
Coming slyly through the window
To rouse you with a whisper
Where once I trumpeted glory
Your winter
Downy and muffled
Adrift in a warm bundle
Arms fingers thighs slack
Bones unfused and sprung
In your time of after
Holding you with slow breath
While you await
Spring’s limbic call
To bud once more
