Within the silence
“I lift my hands to you. I kneel toward my heart. I have no other home.”
. (Leonard Cohen)
In Reims, I stood within the silence
of the gathering dusk,
inside the Notre Dame cathedral:
A speck of dust, forever caught
in fading bruises of soft light
that fell from Chagall’s
stained glass windows…
I watched the sky above the island
bleed in angry blue red streaks
and saw the palms that guard the beach
shivering like a flight of doves
that felt the shadow of the hawk,
just before the night was torn
by lightning’s hungry talons…
yet neither art nor nature can compete
with these stilled memories of you:
Your hair that moves under my breath,
while you are fast asleep;
your naked skin, so warm and soft,
yet strong enough to rise and bear
the storm of my awakened hopes and longings.