LOFT

Hold me in the dark of this loft floating beyond time.
Wrap all of you around me and do not let go.
Drape my chest with cedar beads and beads of blue.
Make fast your lips on the back of my neck and the small of my back.
Hang your breath from the lobes of my ears, in-breath on the left, 
    out-breath on the right.
Leave a trail of stones down the hill of your belly I can follow 
    in the moonlight.
Strike me against the obsidian of your eyes and let me
shape the look you keep for me alone.

And when we lay in the dark most quiet,
beneath the pine needle scrawl and the smudge stroke of stars,
say then what the heart says, what the skin sings,
what lips enchant and fingertips intone.
Speak then the unspoken speech,
the wordless words we lift and loosen into the wind
and let go in the winding breath
that twines and braids between us.

This loft is the still dark center of time,
our eyes the still deep wells of love.
We count beneath our meshed fingers
the slow still pulse of the universe,
one rhythm, one beat
echoed and thumping
in the one pulsing muscle
our swelling hearts long to share.


© 2003 by Richard W. Todd

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