Oh, Pleiades

The moon rose over

The rice fields


Cast silver beams across our first embrace.


A month slid by.


She turned to shadow, her face

Faded and re-illumined,

Re-turned to fullness

As did I, as did you –


We were always in the right place.


Obscured from each other


By other bodies,


By divine timing;


Limbs kept within a hair’s breath


And our eyes averted


Half-heartedly,


Whole-heartedly denying


The longing, the pining.


Choices and illusions, though.


Shamanic smokes and mirrors.


Decisions made not one at a time


But outside time altogether.


And all of this is unfolding


As perfectly as a flower


At dawn


Who need not decide


Which petal she should first unfurl


Nor which shade colours her vital flesh,


Her vulnerability;


Nor which tendril or tender lip


Should curl to lick


The morning dew


To drink to her own health and


Beauty anew.


Meanwhile, lady Diana


Draws the oceans to her lips


As dance floors heave


And lovers draw


New lovers to their hips


As ash and molten rock


Are spit in rage


Against the sky


In prophetic motions


Towards the coming of


Our darkest night.


There was no before


And there will be no after


But these bodies are


Pulsating, physical matter


In space


In time


And the questions of


Am I his?


Is he mine? –


These are the worries we’re reduced to,


Of the mind, what we’re used to,


But the longing for


Belonging


Ripples


Beneath it all.


And this symbol of


Desire


Points to


The cosmic fire


Of our stellar fall


From home,


The place


Before we were ‘alone’.


The place we forget


When we are born,


And what we get


In human form


Is this desire


That can’t be reasoned


In the libraries of the mind.


The more we feel,


The more we find


The threads of our cosmic origins


Woven into well-told tales


Hanging from rags on thin shoulders


Trailing loose ends ‘round dreary towns


Wrapped ‘round a lovers’ embrace


‘Round the paintbrushes


And the pens


And the voices that sound.


And as you and I wove towards each other


On a dance floor or four


And time slowed so we could see the


Gossamer strings lighter than air,


Golden, spun from a star-spool,


We realized we’d chosen this –


This,


This would be the time and place


When we would meet again.


Though we’d wear


The bodies of strangers


We’d know the face –


I know you like I’ve always known you.


Wearing whatever face you’ve chosen


This time ‘round,


Nothing but a canvas for the soul


To shine through;


I know you like I’ve


Always known you.


We’re cut from the same


Cloth of night sky,


You and I.


Drops of


The elixir of forgetting


Fresh on our lips,


And still,


I know you.


The same space of


Dark light


Vibrating behind the eyes


There’s not a word


We’ve been given


On this planet


That’ll help us realize


And yet,


I know you like I’ve


Always known you.