Between

Between my Self and God, your name.
Between my body and the formless one, your dance.

(At the edge of the meadow, where the forest begins, evening mist and moonlight: you tease our seeing)

Between one heartbeat and another, a silence engulfing the stars.

(Slowly whirling whiteness in the moon-pearled night, you emerge like a flame of ghee)

Between the longing and the tear, your absence.
Between distance and nearness, my faith.

(Some of us are weeping, others are becoming flutes of breath)

At the crest of inhalation, a trembling seed of birthless light.
At the trough of exhalation, a blue flower
floating in your well of presence.

(You leave us, yet your imperishable smile wells up from our bellies, and we become your faces)

Between my navel and the uterus,
a rose-scented whisper of blood.
Between goddess and lover, virgin and whore, your undulation.

(We are soaked with dew. Someone keeps drumming across the meadow. You have departed. Fog settling on trees, forgetfulness: yet I continue to gaze at your glimmering gesture of possibility.)

Between the kirtan and the tongue, my spine.
Between this flesh and the strings of desire, my nerves.
You play them like a vina with your glance.

(Worlds are wounds in space. We dwell in crimson places, learning to endure the long separation that ends with every sigh.)

Between image and emptiness, the chiaroscuro:
your beauty and its odorous shadow of yearning.
Between coiling and uncoiling, your outward and inward spiral,
a sacred confusion.
I am Shiva now, you are Shakti, never knowing when to stop
until you galaxy my mind
with infinitesimal syllables of bliss.
Between the Lord and his paramour, a secret sound.
In that sound, a world; in that world, a meadow for the dance.

(You are leaf-veined sunlight in the green gold garden, the wash of warmth on umber mushrooms. I am the fortunate grass, crumpled under your naked foot.)

Between our mouths, one ghasp.
Between our lips, a wine drop barely tasted,
a mantra stronger than sorrow.
We cry into each other's nearness.

Now crush this poem in your fist and throw it on the fire,
lest anyone find out that we are one, yet two!