O, your eyes, I’ve gone so long
Without their gaze, passed
So many nights beneath
Slate skies hewn from stoney
Evenings, witnessed
All the Earth’s fury in an orange
And all the Earth’s peace in cotton,
Partaken in the comings and goings
Of insects, bathed in watercolor,
And borne the pains of life like a tattoo
That, healed, becomes beautiful.

I remember the moments your eyes
Would undress me as spring reveals
Color lost in other seasons (as
Our love has been lost to other seasons),
Remember how I would slip into
The robe of their glance, how warm,
How clean, how calm,
When I would dream dreams of you that felt
In my heart like mint in my mouth.

But o, your eyes, I sought the waist of their beauty,
I traced the line of their complexity, 
I traveled the distances to which they turned,
I grazed the eyelash of your blinking heart
Until, open or closed, I saw what you saw,
Became the hopes projected on your eyelids
And the peace your sight exudes;
You shook the branches of my heart
Until I fell in love, until I withered
Upon the field of your vision. 

O, your eyes, I am in love with them today
As I once was, before they looked away.
The constancy of my love is a friend
Whose home I make my own;
The only difference is that now I reside elsewhere
And now I, too, can look away. 

Wednesday, June 30th, 2004