Girl with words:
I thank you for your poem,
the gift of your light, a single ray
that once had shone
from the sun that you keep within you,
that star that you call 'heart',
now frozen, for eternity,
in the words of ice. The ice,
dry as an arid summer,
locked in an unmoving struggle,
its energies looped into their own sockets,
waits. For what?
Why, Sonia, you already know.
The fire that opens itself,
unfolding its heavy skeins of flame
from its own bright within:
it comes. And all the ice
in all the floes in all the seas
of all the Earth cannot stop it.
So? What? YOu see this fire I feel,
you herald its coming, you may say,
O self-important man,
but what, indeed, does it matter?
The fire will come, or not;
the ice will melt, or not;
and nothing after.
Not quite. There is a child born
when two such titans meet,
a spark that kindles in the howl
of their elemental storm.
The deluge. The water
burst from the rock,
the rain that falls in dry places.
It is cousin to the blood
that circumnavigates your world,
the waves that wash your heart
with air from faroff shores,
with the quiet breath of poets,
with the mighty breath of gods.
I, too, am a water-thing,
just a pair of ragged claws,
or perhaps the tattered mast
of a catamaran, half-sunk,
clinging to the surface of you, Sonia,
wild sea, typhoon,
gentle summer rain,
laughter of the little brook,
thunder of waves.
The rain will come.
Do not ask when;
in the pulse of your blood,
the salt of your tears,
you know.
I cannot.
You see, answers are for poets.
I am just a boy with words.
