It was a vast country

where the strangers ignore you

so much that you doubt your own presence.

They are all in Love too:

bumping into things,

forgetting to eat,

whistling and smiling unconsciously

while looking into space.

It was a startling trip

but tomorrow,

I've decided I'm going again,

maybe even looking to stay.

If you could wear that hint of smile,

the one you wore whilst we sat and spent fractions of life

on the shoreline,

I'd love to meet you there too.

As those who carry faith

beyond the temple;

as those who carry

dreams of homeland beyond exile;

so too love is carried

beyond this absence.

With your love's small hands

a spirit is rebuilt,

bedrock

to cloud-crowned summit

the royal earth rises,

fountains up,

spills over, climbs

the ladder of itself -

an upscape;

an outscape -

a mountain fills

a void upon the earth.

Your love's small hands

seduce the dust,

the honored soil blooms,

ripe worlds

flash into cosmic being,

with a burst of touch

planets plume:

you snare the breath

of the universe.

Star -

full organic star

of love,

I am reissued

by the light

of your palms:

from grain to cosmos,

I am expansive,

immortal,

entire,

peerless

as a god -

peerless

as the first who knew

the whole of love,

the birth of love,

the joy of life

before it existed.

It is like this:

the ray is stable.

It holds space,

shines with perfect stasis, but that

is action. We are

the inactive ones,

we who circumnavigate;

so often forgetting our motion.

It is a whisper to a void

sans expectation,

a finger on a naked throat

trailing slowly.

The sun is always present.

It is a blade to carve a different name

where your own was fixed,

a wind to thresh your body

into oblivion;

a mirror

to marvel breathlessly

at the dessicated self.

We are the sinking.

We are the rising.

And love is action.

And love is standing still.

As the gods intended, the core of my old soul

pulses with your ancient light. Even now,

your vivid energy fountains like a supernova,

and you, inside me,

gleam with a new life.

You are my new star, and I gaze

upon you with curious eyes.

Yet inside yourself, darkness falls

like an iron veil: your spirit is a damp stone,

and your hands hold a thin warmth.

Often, you cast your light over the precipice

of your longing, peering for another's face.

The harpoon of old sorrows

strikes too deep for consolation.

So it must be as this, for

a heart cannot travel any less

than a full journey. Even as you tremble

with the stern burden of your foreign pains;

even as you are cut short by the guillotine

of empty solace, new star,

I will hold your light:

the patient core of my old soul

will wait to love you

as the gods intended.