Even Now, As You Enter My Poems

 

Without end or beginning––this is how it is,

Inimitable, exactly as you are,

Even now, as you enter my poems,

As you whisper in my ear

Of thighs entwined, lips your lips did kiss.

Who can say which way is not the way onward?

 

(All loves are the way onward.)

 

As you trek with the weight of each precious moment––

Without knowing what has been purged,

Or why this moratorium is lifting,

Or how the curfew will end,

Or when the incessant wrangling

Between states will be pushed away,

 

(Or who will speak for the essence of the people.)

 

The light holds us when none else will.

We count ourselves among the footsteps

Of all that is close and all that is gone

And all that’s forgiven

And all that’s to come.

 

 

24 December 2004

 

 

[Published in Mantra Winds: Poems 2004-2010.

© 2010 by Jim Cohn.]