Love Poem / for Calum and Jordan E.

You, Brother Lover
and you, Sister Strong

siphon wailings from my lungs, screams

and words that expand every wall

into it’s other side,

and dance and wheat and salt

our love upon the earth

to taste of scab and

stain like rain.

Even over ocean and plain,

yours is my pain.

My gut and breast are sick

for your children.

My eyes raw with what

you cannot un-see.

With each prayer breathed,

you bend my knee.

You run deep in me.

We let riversong rush the world out.

We let stillness swamp echo the world in, slow.

All of it, waves

urging us onward and

deeper, onward and deeper.

Talking to us from Ireland

or underwater,

or straight from our fathers' mouths,

or warbly

through some tape recorder that missed us

under the bridge of holy rage.

The King and the Hummingbird,

Russian Olive and Cypress Tree,

you run deep in me.

And in the streets, We:

chanting and preaching.

Shouting maniac, play mask, play prophet.

Harass the neighbors!

Harass the angels!

Shake the mother from her sleeping trunk

and die a little,

just for fun.

And in the streets, We:

dancing and squealing,

spinning entire shorelines on our skirt tips,

stomp waltz steps in rosewater puddles, clasp

hands and beat dirt with

One fist,

for those whose blood has curdled.

This love.

A love, inevitable, as it may be;

A love that found God,

           killed him, feasted,

           and bore sacred poetry;

A love of reinforcements and returning;

Oh, my Pharoah,

Oh, my Queen,

You run deep in me.