Amid Her Waves

Unknown photographer

The length of her back
a wild symphony of waves
into one another clashing,
frothing white and lashing
salt in endless sprays,
weaving the air into poems fraught
with soft melting hymns,
each in midair curving
into a soft burning flame
then weeping, in my palms,
on my aching fingertips
the unbearable desire
to course through her waves,
become the sailor whose ship
plunges ever deeper into her mist,
become the red sun whose lips
shiver with a boundless thirst
to imbibe her frothing wine
and be drunk, drunk, drunk
on this softest of all cruelties.

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I could do nothing

“Pierre, I don’t want to die,” she looked at me and said, an unspeakable look in her eyes, and I sat there, helpless, unable to do anything, unable to save the life of the one person I love most. I couldn’t save her, I couldn’t, and now she is forever gone, now I will never again see her or hear her voice, feel her next to me. “No one other than you will ever know who I really am,” I told her, true she said, no one will. No one will ever care for me as much as she did, read me like an open book. “Will you name your daughter after me?” she asked, “no, because you’re not goanna die, you’re not going anywhere; together forever as we always said,” I replied to her.

A week later she passed. And as she laid there suffocating I had to sit right next to her, accompany her as she died, hold the hand I’ll never feel again, contemplate the eyes I’ll never again see open, the mouth that will never speak, trying to memorize as much of her I could. She laid there suffocating, and I could do nothing. At night when I sleep her suffocating breath is all I can hear. The person I love more than life died in front of me and I could do nothing, nothing…

Then I had to kiss her cold forehead, feel her cold face and hands. Eyes closed, I talked to her and she didn’t speak. The body and person I so intimately and deeply know now cold, lifeless. That was the last time I saw her. Now the rest of my life I’ll spend missing her, as though my own heart is torn away from me. I cannot even begin to tell you about the immensity of this pain.

Haiku # 169

Summer winds
among the grasses,
the whisper of shadows.

Haiku # 168

Tea and honey,
a haiku forming
on her lips.

Smiling She Knew

That day she woke at dawn
with a strange pitter-patter sensation
quivering upon her lips,
inside her heart,
all over her skin,
and smiling she knew
she was in love with him,
that his heartbeats
in the ocean of his soul
had found anchor,
that his poem
through her was now unfolding
white and pure as dawn.

A Lover’s Solitude

When I turn away from you
Closer to you do I get!
So if I’m alone don’t fret
Purer I’ll distil like dew
Then return, return to you.

Senryu # 95

Calling, calling back,
In the heart of dawn two birds
Weaving their lovesong.

Free Verse # 274 (the sea in nimble motion)

Like honey in hot tea
she melted into him,
becoming the blood
of his poetry.

~

Like autumn leaves
my poems fall,
curled in the breath
of your eternal silence.

~

His invisible touch
Envelopes her
As full of him
She arches,
Mad and quivering,
Birthing a sea of stars.

~

Seared by loss,
knowing how fragile it all is,
with shaking hands
he held her kiss
and filled with the throb
of fear and awe
he wept in the rain.

~

He longed for nothing more
than delving into the forests
of her dreaming eyes,
lose himself in the corridors
of their burning silence.

~

She is the sea
in nimble motion,
burning rainbows
rolling out from her
in endless waves,
lashing the world mad
into sweet poetry.

Senryu # 94

His lips on her brow
A quivering flame searing
The white vow of love

Senryu # 93

His touch painted her
The way silence paints the dawn,
Silent, unseen, whole.

My Sister Sleeps

Beneath the pines my sister sleeps
No joy or woe upon her creeps,
My falling tears call out to hear
Once more her voice warming my ear,
Yet my sister sleeps in deep rest
No voice will call her from the west,
Forever unseen now she dwells
There where the darkness swells and swells.

Ruba’i # 24

The bird took flight to sleep in the sky’s nook,
The flower fell, flowed down a hidden brook,
The lonely poet, the wind in his hands,
Sighs in the air his longing for a hook.

Her Touch

A poet I once knew:

I fashioned my heart a garden of dew,
A liquid monument of poetry,
But then she touched it and away it blew
Like rain in the sky of eternity.

And a philosopher:

My mind I erected as a statue
A powerful witness to certainty,
But then she touched it and burning it blew
Embers in the heart of eternity.

Free Verse # 273 (reason in a wild flight)

She looked at him
and all the fires of the world
pooled into her eyes

~

Let the waters flow,
an ocean of stars heaving
amid our bare souls.

~

She responded
to his presence
the way the dewed flowers
after a long night
open up to the sunlight,
exhaling again
their simple majesty.

~

In his chest
her each breath he holds,
a poem, a flower,
a love growing tenderly.
In his eyes you can see
where he holds her,
how deep,
how in him she lives,
in every breath,
in every beat of heart.

~

Fluttering amid my poems
night is a dark butterfly,
the stars off her wings falling
to rain through my memory.

~

Tonight, as every night,
he is the poem of stars
budding inside of her,
alighting her flesh from within,
drowning her in hope and mystery.

~

To the bee the world
is the flower’s beating heart;
my being is the bee
whose world is her heart.

~

My poem
a jar of fireflies
breaking at the feel
of her breath in the air,
a thousand stars travelling
to sleep in her heart,
to sleep forever.

~

So long as autumn and spring
dance their dance
in endless whispers
you’ll breeze
inside of me.

~

A rainbow in the night?
Touch her heart and you’ll see
Reason in a wild flight.

~

Like a fish in the water
with each breath
her salinity fills my blood

Haiku # 167

Autumn leaves,
their curled fingers
a harbour of silence.

Haiku # 166

Loneliness,
through the dark trees
gentle starlight.

Free Verse # 272 (I carry you in me)

I carry you in me
a womb birthing me forever

~

You are gone
and my heart is a tumult of memories
in endless waves rushing,
breaking on the white shore
of your eternal absence.

~

Eternally glowing
with silent stars
the nightsky
is the flower
of your sleeping eyes

~

On the lips
of each autumn leaf
a whisper,
spring is in my heart.

~

Scattering the voices
of those who once were
the wind whispers,
all is transient,
all is passing.

~

You went away
yet into the mist
I keep sailing,
deeper and deeper
in search of your face,
aching for a voice
now in the realm of memory.

~

Sarah Mhanna

Your hair a lion’s mane,
Your smile the sun in her splendour,
Your heart a boundless ocean,
Your presence the embodiment of love.

Senryu # 92

Painting by Irene Sheri

On her face
the flame flickered
a sea of memories

Free Verse # 271 (caressed, all at once, from every side, everywhere)

The bee’s path
leads from flower to flower,
the moth’s
from flame to flame,
and I, poet of the invisible,
with a bee’s and moth’s hunger
burn along the path
of the beats of your heart.

~

Dusk settles,
in her soul
a melting song
aching to be touched.

~

His touch
weaves her bones
into rivers of moonlight
amid the shores of his ribs
endlessly flowing,
soaking deep
to the ground of his soul.

~

He kissed her
and she felt herself
drift through fog,
caressed, all at once,
from every side,
everywhere.

In Your Shadow

The bee and butterfly
spend their lives
in the flower’s shadow,
fluttering, forever,
inside the cloud
of her fragrance,
rhyming their hearts
into the sweet ecstasy
of the golden mead.

Likewise, beloved,
in your shadow
I flutter, live, and grow,
your absence bewitching
my moth instinct
like a candle’s flame
as inside me you burn
into pure poetry.