Lovers (C.E for J.B)

Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.

- Rumi

My breathing is heavy;
I don’t know where I’m going,
or what I’m doing,
or who’s actually doing it.

Not yet.

I know very little,
but I feel so much.

And in there, in some form,
you float about,
a butterfly in my belly
pushing tears up through my eyes.

Little symbols, meandering down my face,

into the sides of my lips,

whispering to me over and over:

She is always with you;

you learnt that a long time ago.

I’m far, far away,
in a distant, alien place.

Searching for something,

for something…

Your face is still,
in my mind.

I can almost touch it.

—

Moments of compassion,

clearly and unequivocally

evoked from you;

enigmatic presence,

more mysterious than the stars,

just as curious.

When tears drop from your eyes

and reflexively stream from mine,

I feel no separation.

All the more when it is our pain.

—

Please grow, my lover,

my friend.

We were meant to grow

and grow and grow,

but I don’t quite see you now,

in that flow of things…

Up and up you are meant to go!

You were a seed once too,

you know.

Way up high in the sky,

so one day,
you will seed your own;

sewn and grown in the sweetest soil

—a healthier strain,

far, far from all this pain.

And like a goddess

the pieces of you will sprout,
spread, and be the earth;
be all things but each also just one,

far less in need of healing
than the trees and shrubs of suburbia.

Please grow and grow,

my lover, my friend;

for I cannot bloom, with rigour,

without you, growing too.

In the end, in the end,

please grow, my lover,
my friend.

—

As much as I love you,

your life is not me;

your love not just mine.

Your heart is needed out there.

Seeds in the wind,
spreading to eternity.

I know these words cannot hold you,

touch you, warm you;

be strong in forgetting me a while,
for your memories are mere wisps of smoke

—the fire burns elsewhere, for now.

The blue sea is always there for you;

I am not the creator of the sun’s warmth.

Be calm, lover;

the ocean sweeps all from the sand,
and we are just two sets of hands,

grasping at what we’ve always had.

—

Years of slight turmoil,

and then

—a smooth patch;

a patch that in turn turned,
into a quilt.

A rather large quilt.

I don’t know,

But feel that I love you;

to claim to know much has always seemed,

to me,

a rather handsome mistake.

So sadly, perhaps, for you,

I know nothing
(let alone that);

but rest peacefully in the thoughts,
that I value what I feel more than what I know.

It’s a hard thing, all this;

but the deeper breaths I get,
when I’m with you,

make it difficult to imagine another.

Of course, of course…(the chorus chant)

One moment at a time.

—

Know that I am a man of music,

drifting, drifting, ever drifting;
held sound only by conscious attachments,
elusive grains of sand
on a windswept beach.

They’re all little games to me, sometimes;
some are just more serious than others.

The only concession I can make,
in this regard,

comes as a question:

Would you like to dance awhile, with me?

Even in my absence
(I certainly can’t dance well, anyway),

you certainly do have the moves…

—

That clever kind of warmth,

you wield over me like a mother;

how pointless to resist (with a smiley face).

Curled up, joker’s smile,

forever at peace if at arm’s length.

A hearth and fire if ever I saw one.

A creature fathomless as all are,

all its ups and downs, yeas and nays;

its folding forms, epic highs and drawn-out troughs.

Lucky enough to be with and hold you,

through the moments;

the moments themselves.

—

Sometimes it is hard,

to be around you and not touching;

to be speaking, but not feeling.

Those periods of wax and wane,

no acquaintances can healthily avert.

I am a moody creature,

—though aren’t we all?

The weight of the world seals that envelope…

The weight can drag, but

with awareness, can grow as light as emptiness;

for with you, and you, and you

I have felt so much

—and been relieved in thinking less.

Some kind of feminine touch,

radiated to me from your unique soul.

A femininity that, long ago,

this creature noticed had been missing for quite a while.

—

And amidst the constant low-hum of my own inner ramblings,

your image arrives easily yet again:

Head-to-toe wet, standing like a little girl in the shower;

hair flat, so you look kind of like a cute fur seal,

washing and cleaning, scrubbing away,
and all the while not knowing,

that you’re going to be ‘the cutest of the lot’,

as they say.

You always were!

But you scrub-a-dub-dub,
anyway.

—

What we all seem to do,

to a certain extent,

is attach ourselves to things

—to concepts, forms, instances of patterns…

We try and we try to find whatever it is we are looking for;

grasping at sand, hoping none of it falls through our tiny hands.

‘I’ won’t return from where I’m going.

But someone will come back,

to hold you.

—

If you miss me when I’m gone,
promise me that—in spite of anything—
you will allow yourself to cry,
your tears to come forth.

For to deny us that,
would prove endlessly sad,
endlessly lonely and painful.

My tears, then, would have no one to talk to.

—

Follow your feelings around every bend;

let them settle where they please

and be careful questioning them
—they are not minds,
but gut aches, pains, ecstasies and joys.

Be gentle with your being,

it supports you as you do it;

love as much as you love me,

and you will have a thousand lovers,

and nothing in-between.

—