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Following Love for One Thousand Years
by Leigh Marthe

I am the woman
from another ancient myth
who is learning to trust
that nothing of importance really exists.

Even while I follow the one I love,
willing him to go on for a thousand years
with only the thought of me
following him step by step
toward the promise of faith,
I am so very hungry
to trace the edges
of his soul.

What comfort there would be
in pressing fingertips lightly
at those delicately stitched seams of light
draped over the empty temple of our bodies.
I have only to carefully close my weary eyes
to see the room we have created
for this sacred union.
The light and heat of candles.
The perfume of lotus petals and amber liquids.
The taste of honey dipped on salty skin.
The power and discretion of silence.

Here we honor nothing
but the freedom of all
who have loved the great nothingness
that binds no one.

When you finally turn your trusting gaze to me
after all the centuries of remembering only my voice
and forgetting the beauty of my flesh,
I will be wearing black against the cold of this travel,
the universe of stars a shawl spread over my stooped shoulders.

When you recognize the true self you know in the sunken orbs
on my face, I will gather you into my arms,
embracing at last and for all time.

It is here we are all forgiven.
It is here we forget what has trapped us in suffering for so long.
It is here we all must finally go.

 

Copyright 2008 by Leigh Marthe