About the impossibility of writing one's love....
Want to tell you
How you feel,
Who you are,
What you mean.
Want to revel in such questions,
Luxuriate in each and every one -
Walk slow across its lawns
Feeling the blades of grass,
Soft and cool,
Between my toes
Never the words.
Nevertheless I write.
Never the words,
Still I try to write you right,
Try to fight the impossibility
Of constraining any aspect of you,
Of containing even a hint of you
Within the poet's paper boundary.
The thought of you impels me
Like a sure hope and certainty -
Neither commands nor instructs
But plays with me:
Plays me
Like Clapton's left hand
Or Bonnie Raitt's bottleneck
Conjuring chords, runs and slides
From deep inside:
Notes beyond audible range –
All infra and ultra:
Off the scale of all but
The harmonies of your heart
And the time-signature of your soul.
I once said: "Please don't ever satisfy me",
And you knew instantly what I meant.
Let there be always more of you
As I sail your seas:
New oceans, new currents,
Undiscovered continents, far horizons
And capricious winds and azimuths to chart you by.
Let me never succeed in writing all of you –
May you always be just out of reach.