Walking into Love

We walk into love
with purposeful footfalls
mimicking leisure
as if in a park in Moscow
honoring summer
blessed by the
benevolent moonlight
or as if through
dozens of torii
at Fushima Inari Taisha
flanked by messages
directed to Heaven
or as if in a communion
with an azure dawn
on a dulcet dance
to the edge of destiny.

After the many cases
of falling
love is open
to something gentler
than the usual trespass.

We walk into it
bearing rustic boughs
of sun-kissed fruit,
baskets of conversation,
and a profound
appreciation for rain.
We walk into it
with our flesh,
having once been given over
to both hunger pains
and short-lived satiety,
no longer a vessel
nor an instrument
but a hallowed offering.

We walk into it
with virtue
and all that we have left
all that are ever
worth keeping
with the thirteenth verse
of the First Book of
Corinthians seared
beyond memory
beyond words
like a song we breathe
like a subtle garment
of the sun.

I will walk toward you
without fear
if you walk toward me
prepared to live
like the blue flame,
closer to the Source,
blasphemy and prophecy
like fall leaves,
crunching beneath
the soles of our feet.