Tender Moment
And you smile your big-cheeked smile,
Your eye breaking out of your face
Like the sun through the mist
Of a young and ancient dawn;
Your lips play around the base
Of your teeth,
A laughter erupts, fresh
As the frothy song of a mountain stream
Finding rippling echoes
In the hard-soft depth of unseen things
And the fable of inchoate showers
Which tease the thighs of sprawling fancies
Your eyes memorize the hours,
Stretch dry moments into succulent eternities
Then run them d-e-e-p
Like the Zambesi of our rooted longings
You are the fragrance
Which lends a name to varnished gardens,
The door which hums the chronicle
Of the house…
And so you said:
“Let us go behind the walls
And I will show you
The birthmark below my navel”