I’ve been feeling an inexplicable yet palpable, edgy grief filled with gnarling anguish, waves of tenderness, and hints of nostalgia, love and longing.  The grief became stronger last night.  I dreamed that someone I once loved was curled up under a bridge hurt and crying.  I wrapped myself around him.  Instead of telling him how much I loved him, however, he was telling me.  Crying and telling me, “I love you.”

I wish I knew for sure who it was!  The sensations are so strong and intimate, as though they were coming from someone with whom I’ve been very, very close, yet I cannot place them for the life of me!  Something once frozen or stuck has become ruffled, slightly more open than before.  There is regret and a sense of loss but something positive, a recognition of love, I think.

Whoever you are, know that you are loved.  Whatever lay in the past, I think of you fondly.  We outgrow frustrations but not love.  I’m grateful that you are in this world.

May you feel cozy as winter comes closer.  May sunlight warm your skin today.

A Gift of Dream on a Dreary Night

You spent a year in the asphalt alleys
after losing dear friends.
You were five years in the arctic tundra,
and after she left,
two in the streets of Calcutta.

If I could take you anywhere,
I wouldn’t take you there, love.
I would surround you with a Paris night.

Look around your quiet room.
Your dark ceiling
is the clear evening sky
deepening with twilight
filling with writhing swirls of starlings
spreading up into the last glints of sunset.
Your jacket
draped over your desk chair,
the silhouette of a couple.
Through the iron gates and
garden vines you watch
them on the park bench
kissing
and
caressing.
Your old thermos
on your textbooks
is a bottle of French wine
with an ornate box of
almond and chocolate
candies from Aix en Provence.
Listen.
The noise
outside your window is a
soft Brazilian beat
vibrating
in the warm night air,
musicians drumming in the grass by the Seine.
Flowing interludes
and erotic sitar
pull you closer.
Deep grooves
run rough beneath your feet.

Brahman says:
wherever two or more are gathered in its namelessness
there is reality in the midst of them.

Close your eyes
behind the silk and
give me your hands.
Glide down the smooth, hidden avenue
hemmed with golden lanterns,
snaking through the Latin Quarter
opening
out into the plaza.
Pause at the gates
then slowly
push your way through
to the warm fountains
enveloped by whispers and serene smiles,
wet sculptures of Greek goddesses
tilted skyward with eyes closed,
immobilized in the surge of water.

Imagine these things
with me
and leave your awful little room
for the city of tenderness.