Tenderly, I think of you, lovelier
than I have ever known. Your eyes sing,
your voice dances, your hair, fluffier
and wilder than when gypsies laugh and fling
their hearts like tambourines and a fiddle
plays. You dazzle me, but like a rainbow
I can’t reach, a star I can’t touch, a riddle
I can’t penetrate–someone I don’t know.
Our words, when we speak, ricochet.
Gestures I once caught fall from my hands
and bounce across the floor and roll away
into a corner of the room where nothing stands
that is a part of us, but a part of you,
broken, glistening, struggling to be new.
****
The old year ends and I think of you knowing
you are hurting me by breaking pieces
of yourself away, taking them and showing
others who your are, exposing creases,
baring edges, opening cracks and ripping
deep into the core of things. It hurts
you too, I know, to feel love slipping,
not knowing why, but knowing changing shirts,
and pants and putting on a crazy hat
is not enough to give you what you need.
Somehow, I’ve hurt you too. I know that–
a hurt so deep in you that you can’t bleed,
or see the wound but only feel it there
urging you to leap and dangle in the air.
****
The new year comes and I watch you climbing
out onto your cliff, trying hard to stand
and overcome the winds that blow, the blinding
snows, the icy forces that demand
obedience and fear. I watch you trying
not to hear my cry, straining not to give
away this chance–knowing that denying
your urge to crawl out to the edge and live
would mean that you would plunge back to the dust
and lay there like a stone. So here we are,
frightened by the distance, trying hard to trust
the other’s stamina, not wanting to mar
the other’s life so much so that when you stand,
looking out, perhaps, we’ll want the other’s hand.
