POEM: THE MOONLIGHT TELLS HER SECRETS

I have shone upon you, and
upon all of your grandmothers,
every one.

I have lain among the fragrant
sandalwood forests with
dark-eyed men
and made romantic
the guilt edges
of their sharp scimitars.

I have caressed the breasts
and smooth thighs of
lush maidens on the floor of jungles,
and danced across the thorns of thistle
on moors
inhospitable and alien
without me.

I have touched the
rarest flower as she bloomed,
and also as her last petal withered and fell
to the ground.
I have ridden
the broad whale's back
as he spiraled above the ocean,
and as he disappeared into
the water again,
dove back down
far below
out of my reach

and left me to mourn on the surface
of the smooth sea,
for stormy weather and white capped waves.
You ask me
how can I love
such an ordinary place,
average people,
undistinguished streams and woods
without distinct character?

These few ragged weeds in an urban sidewalk
crack?
And ghetto palm trees,
their scent
blending with the stink of the sewage-runoff
wash that is pregnant with trash,
dry and stagnant,
rarely clear with stream--

How could I love such as this?

You ask me
because you think it would be better
if I had found you
gazing at me from the base of
the Taj Mahal
or beaches of Bora Bora.

Can you not see that
I love you all
equally?
The scimitar and the palm fronds
and the sea and the
dry wash, I love them all
the same.

I love you. And I love the kings,
and the sandalwood forests
and the soft bellies and backsides
of agile maidens. And I love
the sleeping larks,
swooping bats,
mating frogs, and

the drunk man ordering tacos at
jack in the box drive thru at 2 AM,
wondering if his wife will let him in
when he gets home. I love him and I love
the self-immolating monk
in Myanmar, lighting
the predawn capitol streets
with a glow that seems warm
and inviting,
from an ignorant distance.

I love the piles of rubbish,
and the empty lots,
and the ancient icebergs in the Arctic seas,
and the bloody battlefields
filled with fallen heroes.
I love the maggot and the murderer,
the wolf and the lamb,
the cockroach and the Kephri,
I love them all the same.

I love everything that you are,
and I illuminate everything
that you might choose your
path, and make your way.

I love you so much that I
would spend eternity
in the darkness,
my gaze mesmerized, turning,
undulating
over you as you stand beneath
those ordinary cottonwoods,
by that undistinguished creek,
in an uneventful city.

All have my blessing.
All are part of the night.
All may share the bounty
of my light.

I love and I find love.
I love and I find you.

I shine upon you,
and you shine upon the night.

Copyright 2012