The Music

Autumn evening, a choir gathers--
a tendril of song connects
your bass, my alto--
separate notes
but one voice

I slide my eyes your way
listen as your voice rises alone
watch your fingers strum the guitar

my fingers yearn to stop
the strumming, return your touch
to my face, my hair, my body--
remembering entwined evenings

still your voice continues
in tones as silver as your hair--
still the guitar fills the room

you slide your gaze my way
drink in the smile
that makes you smile
feel the heady reminder
of where we find ourselves
in life, in this love

then,
back to the music

I Crave Your Voice, Your Mouth, Your Hair -- By Pablo Neruda

DON'T GO FAR OFF, NOT EVEN FOR A DAY
Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

And Because Love Battles--From Pablo Neruda

A new discovery of mine--Pablo Neruda, Pulitzer prize winning poet and Communist politician (real name Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto) who lived from 1904 to 1973 and was beloved but exiled from his birth country, Chile. Here is a lovely poem for you to enjoy from Pablo Neruda...

And Because Love Battles

And because love battles not only in its burning agricultures but also in the mouth of men and women, I will finish off by taking the path away to those who between my chest and your fragrance want to interpose their obscure plant. About me, nothing worse they will tell you, my love, than what I told you. I lived in the prairies before I got to know you and I did not wait love but I was laying in wait for and I jumped on the rose. What more can they tell you? I am neither good nor bad but a man, and they will then associate the danger of my life, which you know and which with your passion you shared. And good, this danger is danger of love, of complete love for all life, for all lives, and if this love brings us the death and the prisons, I am sure that your big eyes, as when I kiss them, will then close with pride, into double pride, love, with your pride and my pride. But to my ears they will come before to wear down the tour of the sweet and hard love which binds us, and they will say: “The one you love, is not a woman for you, Why do you love her? I think you could find one more beautiful, more serious, more deep, more other, you understand me, look how she’s light, and what a head she has, and look at how she dresses, and etcetera and etcetera”. And I in these lines say: Like this I want you, love, love, Like this I love you, as you dress and how your hair lifts up and how your mouth smiles, light as the water of the spring upon the pure stones, Like this I love you, beloved. To bread I do not ask to teach me but only not to lack during every day of life. I don’t know anything about light, from where it comes nor where it goes, I only want the light to light up, I do not ask to the night explanations, I wait for it and it envelops me, And so you, bread and light And shadow are. You came to my life with what you were bringing, made of light and bread and shadow I expected you, and Like this I need you, Like this I love you, and to those who want to hear tomorrow that which I will not tell them, let them read it here, and let them back off today because it is early for these arguments. Tomorrow we will only give them a leaf of the tree of our love, a leaf which will fall on the earth like if it had been made by our lips like a kiss which falls from our invincible heights to show the fire and the tenderness of a true love.

Bouquet

You return bearing flowers--
a bridge from that distant place.
Each petal trembles
in my receiving arms.
Stemlike, I drink in hope, emerge
from the drought of your leaving.
Where do you go when you can't be
in this place called Us?
What voice beckons your return
with rose-filled hands?