Signals to Her Heart
Out where the ocean beats its calm thunder
against grainy shores of quartz and sand,
she strolls, hands pocketed in a flowing gown
of pearl-like luminance.
I can see her with hair the color of sky’s deepest night
when it whispers to the sun’s widow
to masquerade as the sickle’s light.
This is she.
The one who knows me as I am
though untouched is my skin.
The world from which she steps
pounces from mystery,
announces her calm beauty
like a willow tree bent to still waters.
In this unhurt place she takes her body
to the shoreline listening for sounds
beneath the waves
that tell her what to do.
How great is her dream?
Will it take her across the sea?
Does she hear my heart’s voice
before the translation?
She scoops some sand
with her sculpted hands and
like an hourglass the particles fall
having borrowed time
for a chance to touch her beauty.
Her lips move with prayers of grace as she tells
the wind her story;
even the clouds gather overhead to listen.
Her gestures multiply me
with the sign of infinity,
disentangled from all calculations,
adorning her face with a poetry of tears.
I am summoned by her voice
so clear it startles me.
I watch her because I can.
I know her because she is me.
I desire her because she is not me.
In all my movement, in the vast search
for something that will complete me,
I have found her
on this shoreline,
her faint footprints,
signatures of perfection
that embarrass time with their fleeting nature.
I am like the cave behind her
watching from darkness,
hollowed from tortured waves
into a vault that yearns to say
what she cannot resist.
A language so pure it releases itself
from my mouth like long-held captives
finally ushered to their home.
She turns her head and looks
past me as if I were a ghost unseen,
yet I know she sees my deepest light.
I know the ocean is no boundary to her love.
She is waiting
for the final path to my heart to become clear.
And I am waiting
for something deep inside
to take my empty hands
and fill them with her face
so I can know the rehearsals were numbered,
and all the splinters
were signals to her heart.
