Dark Kisses
The distant melody of a Japanese flute.
We prayed and prayed, and our fervent cries to the heavens
Brought down torrents of winter rain.
We are no longer sapling youth.
We have circles of new growth rings like the giant sequoia,
Or pine trees sweet and sticky with resin.
There is strength in our love,
Unbending like the pines’ thick branches.
I write you frequent letters saying: “Yes. I still love you.
As you are my entire world.”
But this world refuses to be stilled.
Its pulse beats to the rhythm of your captive heart.
We have grown closer by measuring our quiet distance.
This poem will be a valentine:
I love you like an animal trapped in the barn of your dreams.
Within your embrace, you gently shape my body.
The evening sky is a confusion of starlight.
Dare I come to you in sleep?
Dare I disturb your dream?
We kiss under the moon.
Our kisses are gifts to our dark, dark souls.
And for this dream, I feel no remorse, no guilt.
Only a chance to live within your power.
And for this love there will be a harvest.
—–
Infant Eyes
(after Wayne Shorter circa 1973)
Your perfect eyes full of grief and love gaze at me.
Your perfect limpid eyes are clear windows onto this woeful world.
You have captured me with your look of pure defiance.
People say it is not who you know,
It is what you know.
I have new knowledge of becoming,
the knowing of whom I really want to be:
a sacred brown woman singing my songs inside your strong arms.
You know the boundless hope that lives again and again
within the human heart, a bond for life, alive with healing.
Your eyes say this life is a journey we must take together.
So many worlds in your gaze, your eyes, your every gesture.
You know the cadence, the rhythm of our hips.
Your desire to see satisfaction in my grateful eyes.
You give me your love, silently, without words.
And in the silver silence of your message,
we rehearse the seed, the promise, the passion, the dance,
under a moon kissed sky of dreams.
—–
Poems © Beth Brown Preston
Image: ChatGPT/Adobe AI