Poems From Providence - The Poet's Press

2
Yet this is such an insubstantial fate.
I can think of it now in the context
of this human frame,
hands to write it, lips to speak it
as transcendental prophecy.
Not only the dead but the living
can pass to this realm beyond matter.
All who have lived or ever will are there already
but only one in a thousand suspects it.
Why, then, do I crave for touching,
for arm-enfolding tenderness on winter nights?
Why do I ache for the line of a slender neck,
a moist surrender, the firmness of flesh,
the drumbeat sonnet of another’s heart
loud in my ears, the harmony
of pacing my breath to another’s breath,
falling limbs entwined into a trusting sleep,
or waking first and thanking the gods
for this wall of life between me and uncertainty?
I do not know, except that love
is the fluid of the Muses,
the enhancer of meaning, chariot of purpose,
that one plus one is not two
but infinity,
that entropy, this modern malaise
of the wasting leaf
is the false side of the coin of nature —
base metal welded to hidden gold.