What Is Love?

What is love?
Since we met, I no longer pray
that this be my last life on earth.
Liberation is not to be
without a body, but to dance.
Dance through the aching
and gaze through the tears.
Not flesh that disappears,
but "I" who cannot see
your face, or taste
the dark matter of desire.
Let me come back and beam
my heart through your irises,
breathe up and down your spine,
make you dance with my
flaming exhalation,
swelling two chests
with the motion of one mind
incarnate in a sigh.
I want to undulate
inside your breastbone,
drip down your sternum,
float on the rising falling
tide of your diaphragm
and build my hut in the valley
of your bosom. The mud
between our toes, the wattle
of our bones shall be
the stuff of home-making.
And if, beyond the farthest galaxy
there wander better stars
in some exile of perfection,
let them fall into our moist
unholy sky, and take birth
as our children.


Face by Leonardo da Vinci