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III. The Sight of the Heart Poem
Close to me, hidden in me day and night… —Wallace Stevens
Then this is Love—the wish has made it so— Subterranean as a bulb buried In the full earth with room to accept still Another offering, completely Enveloped, content in its perfect Whole. Dormant, yet alive, a thing in itself Planted within, not entirely unknown to the inspirer, for that mild spring when it will show itself in color.
— Paula Goldman
THE SIGHT OF THE HEART
Ever since you arose in my thought You have been saying to me from a distance: Your face is the face of a seraph And you are one of the riders in the Chariot
We loved together in aimless motion We lived together in a place of punishment Those who go there are entwined, their soul goes out Those who go there do not return.
Blue rivers then were of fire You were a queen in beauty I was a king in majesty And we both loved according to the word.
Never forget: We ascended from all the abysses and the breakings We saw much happiness, also pain, But we were on the highest height of all: We had sight of the heart. —Balfour Hakak
SONG FOR HER DEEP SOUL For JJ
I ‘ve been swimming so long, I don ‘t know I ‘m swimming:
Her eyes will never drown me— it ‘s not her tidal eyes. She sees me bare, cool. She offers a sea where I will swim so long.
To say her touch—her touch cures, That ‘s true—but now, her skin and nerves are a current so soft, so pure I don ‘t know I ‘m swimming.
Her voice? Who ‘d forget that voice— rocking, steady as a buoy calling sailors? There ‘s no choice but to swim for so long
I come in range of her soul— A perfect pilgrim that knows all of me. Like a bell, she tolls— I keep swimming in her direction and I never know that I ‘m swimming.
s a Wall
My soul rose as a wall without a Top which used to dematerialize as Yous drew near, who didn ‘t have to go around but passed right through it. But the wall, liquid
as life, would harden and not melt when you were you: till you became, that is, the you that warmed and generated enough heat to vaporize stone and diamond. Which you have.
And all that ‘s left of who I was, it seems, fallen from our instant ‘s consummate conflagration, is this feather-shard of lost Me, these curled words upon it, sashayed by each whimsy ‘s breath.
The ascendant wall that my soul was is now a bottomless well of light, and yours, and gone. —James B. Nicola
Entanglement
What ‘s mine is yours even when you don ‘t want it
What ‘s yours is mine even when I don ‘t want it.
The soreness in your shoulders is from carrying my hurt
The pain in my back is from bearing your sadness.
You have good days and bad days I have good days and bad days.
Some days you blame me Some days you blame yourself
Some days I blame you Some days I blame myself.
Where you end I begin Where I end you begin
I find the way to me through you You find the way to you through me.
Rosh Ḥodesh Elul
The curvature I anticipate in your entrance, tentative as I am, augurs the newness to be born of me one day in a cataclysmic expulsion, sounding out around the cosmos.
Unfounded planar as you are, you are not surrounded by doubt, your hills rise through shadow, peeking through the curtain toward the earth— how round and proud you will be!
And how I worry sick about The seed deep within me waiting to emerge.
You and I will elide, embrace, enfold again next month, next year, and will flow regularly, and ebb in order to flow again.
Because our children never fully mature.
Rain RiderS
Ghosts glide in on the rain, they ride the night softly, sighing their once-familiar sigh, urging me to explain why I took flight, murmuring calls for confessions I cannot supply.
Some are now dead, some lost, vanished along yesterday ‘s trails that today I cannot follow; restless they rise from the past still singing the song of unforeseeing youth that fears no tomorrow.
Ghosts long forgotten by day in the hubbub of light people I loved long ago (but even love fades and lovers continue their way) return in the night when the wind whispers and rustles the window shades.
After Cancer (Cherry County, Nebraska)
Hillsides painted in fan strokes of autumn bluestem and Indian grass. At dusk, shadows crawl through the shallow valleys. We were left with sloping giants under a lantern of Orion and a setting Venus. A coyote howls.
On the way up, I lit a candle at St. Alselm ‘s (the marquee says “The Cathedral of the Sandhills!”) in memory of memory.
We never touched, though we embraced. You said, “the hills have the last word.” A whisper,. Unheard by time. Satin symphony of light and shadow. Something eternal came true. —Christopher Stewart
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