In Time and Remembered.

Some time mid-day, we laid together, braided up like a piece of old rope,
and before you fell asleep,
your hair fell
there, across your forehead.
I swept it away,
as I always do,
but when I revealed
the skin beneath,
I saw somebody new.
Or old.
Ancient, yes.
The shadow of a man
you once were, some
thousand years ago.

His breathing was slow
and deep,
his beard the same fierce black,
that breath...
the breath I know
and that still stops me fast...
it came, in the same rhythm as yours.

And I looked at him
and some ghost within me stirred...
as if this beautifully familiar stranger
brought out the woman
I may have been some
thousand years ago.

We've been in love
so heavily in love,
over how many lifetimes,
I wonder?

Does it grow deeper?

Do I know you better now?
Is it so easy
and so,
so astronomically much
because we've gone through this
so many times before?

Did we have our lifetime of young love?
Quarreling and licking and throwing
things around like
mad little flames?
Did we shout in glee
into one another's faces,
kissing each scar,
draining the world
in-between, and
praying for a howling night that
wouldn't ever,
ever end?

Did we have our lifetime of comfortable love?
Easy and bored and
so well understood, secure,
warm?
Did we float along
around well-tended
tulips
and bustling tomatoes,
grandchildren underfoot
and white sheets
catching the winds
we were then so
familiar with?

Where are we now?
Where else can we go?

I can feel the sky
gaping open wide,
cracked and waiting,
inviting both you and I
to find what lies beyond,
not just for the world we know,
but for the love we know.

The great heavy
and blissful beyond...
My love.
My love.
My love.