Silhouettes from a More Intricate Light

I first discovered love
the way I discovered Neruda:
alone in a crowd,
at an unexpected place
and by accident,
at an age when I had
no business getting entangled
in that otherworldly sensuality,
nobody had warned me
there were words and thoughts
and times of day and settings
of stories, and then—
there existed that sixth sense
where flesh merged with soul
and nights held secrets
and there isn’t really
enough blue for
the consumption of
the entire universe
to meet the satisfaction
of a hungry eye that can
pierce languages in search
of the meaning that died
just before the first
empty line,

that there was living,
windows of daylight
and the shuffling indulgences
that bless the dreaming dream
with charm, with quaintness
and then—
there was surviving, barely
drunkenly and defiantly
in the throes of the
magnificent impossible,
the beautifully broken
that make the earth
a sweet, savage heartache
an insatiable incandescence
where all expression
falls short
and we shall be forever
only trying, trying
and how mad
and how divine
we get
each time we try…