The Boatsman and the Lake
Lake, awake at last!
Dew rests on eyelashes,
Delicate as petalled glass.
In a shadowed valley, I sleep.
Rise to the hammering rhythm of your song,
To meet and take down the concrete wall,
Flecked white paint, melody rises.
A thin mask of makeup on the face,
A pounding drum amidst this crisis.
She, a potter with wheel and molding hands,
Shapes me from her clay, heals, and heeds my plans.
Sacred henna scripts our names, imprints—
Nails formed in a mother's womb write letters unsent.
Tap my lips to silence worried thoughts,
My head full of potholes, a dead king's court,
The bumps and mistakes of a past ill-considered.
She skims problems like a stone on water, full, unwithered,
Thrown by a child, a worryless time when naught mattered.
Now, all matters.
Everything I feel, I think,
I touch, I taste, I hear, I smell, I am—
Is you.
The last bricks collapse, behind the wall,
A horizon of opportunity,
The lifting of the shawl
Becomes clearer with dust blowing
O'er the surface of your eyes.
Mist moves across water,
I, a boatsman, pole in hand,
Navigate the lake of your soul.
You guide my small wooden shell,
As a mother guides her child away from danger.
This dawn, this dusk,
This timeless glow of a breath shared—
Air inflates two hearts with purpose, paired.
Obsidian water, cupped in palms, softer than your skin,
Warmer than the burning thigh, yearning sigh,
From where all life arrives and departs.
My lungs sing your song,
Effortless grace.
The blade sluices water,
Juice of your lips, nectar immortal.
We float, lost,
To where? Together.