We Must Make Of Our Lives A Work Of Art, Revolving

~ To Kerry

Dawn sun hasn’t yet risen

Arms stretched fawn like

This spring night

On my belly naked

Thighs spread

A foot resting by a leg.

Your body partially clothed

And it bruises easily

So carefully I attempt contact,

Knowingly, like ancient behooving elephants

In matriarchal sisterhood.

You pull me yonder woman

Though slowly I must move this time. Yes,

I want to dive and swim and gaily flap under the eddies,

But air is necessary for breathing

Tenacious creatures

Or I shall never again rise

Wet dripping like I do

Liquid brown eyes to you.

I could Live Forever In your watery depths,

But without sun and light, I would be stripped down

To ivory bone and salted bitter-tasting flesh. We must

Have separate seas, you and me.

I’ve never been here before, not like this.

You’re right

It’s the company I’m keeping

I am mountain and you the soil

Spread out over my granite,

You river and I the embankment soaking you into my sand,

I the journey You ride me,

We are both wild rivers

As the full moon rises.

We both hear, when we are together, rumbling sounds

Like the plains quaking wide

Screeching hawks, falcons, free-falling from cliffs

Over moist vaginal valleys

Mingled with gathering crows

Calling doves

And full forests. Your

Heartbeat creating all this life.

And I know I have come

Finally

To the marriage of body and spirit.

Later with dawn

My arms around you holding,

If you hadn’t told me you seldom do this

I wouldn’t have guessed,

You rest

So soundly, sleeping, as I stroke you gently

And fiercely try

To love away some small portion of your past.

We are making of our loving a ritual,

I never expected this with you,

Possibility, awakened, quietly,

Foreseen only in dream

And unrelenting vision of what is possible.

All around us, a war,

Because it wasn’t me

It was you raped, and I

Lament There is no place safe For long In this world.

When we are together my love

All of this fades and

We need this sort of living too

It’s more than a want, it’s a right.

I long for you

Like I do for freedom

And I want to make it

Never again a sacrifice

Your body

With its endless expanse of land and sky.