Dame Tu Corazon: Cuatro Poemas

The condor wheels…

The condor wheels,

Currents, warm, rise,

Noon pulsates,

Shadows entice,

Stillness, a wing,

Silence beats the air,

Dusk is solace,

Dawn, fair,

Day transforms,

The moon allures,

Clocks chime—brightly!

—love endures,

Time, a dragonfly,

Solitude, a dove,

I am solitude,

You are love.

Your love is a meal we share…

Your love is a meal we share, stopping as events blink by.

We are waiting trains, rushing travelers hop in and out.

Time slows, a luminous animal patrolling the depths.

We visit the bubble of an artisan polishing a vase.

Sitting down, transfixed by a moment of white jade,

We recall lolling on the sand as the outstretched arm

Of a comet flashed our future across a sable sky.

You sip my glass of wine, swirling it toward your lips.

I scoop toward you heaps of fresh rice steaming fragrant clouds.

We gaze at many dishes, teeming fields quilting a fertile valley.

Reflecting on your quiet life…

Reflecting on your quiet life, I gaze at you in repose, your eyes pearls shaken loose from treetops, silvered.

                                                                    

Rain pelts our roof with pebbles as you drift into sleep, river brushwood rubbing shoulders with land.

Rising and falling, a cloud bumping over a mountain, your white arms. Turning, you exhale deeply. Mist gently pushes back your hair.

Wild brushstrokes of pillows and linens tumble as children, their laughter, bolts of silk, shimmying.

Gazebo freshly planted, you wind your legs and arms about a trellis.

Let us be orchids who widen our filigreed faces, leaves tapering to wax points proffering greetings.

Nodding plants in a circle, we will dine with April as our guest, grasping his warm hands from the vows of dawn until the crown of dusk.

Our lives together...

Our lives together are braided vines.

We scale a wall watered by the sun,

Our roots meet in soil fed by rain.

Your arms in sinuous embrace

Lift us to climb ever higher.

Your eyes are nodding leaves,

Good fortune is the breeze.

Budding forth, your kindnesses

Blossom, imperishable.

Let us bask in the day entering

As liminal shadows open shutters.

When the gardener comes by,

I will ask him to trim our love

So that it intertwines forever.

Mango Vendor (1951) by Fernando Amorsolo