CURVE OF THE EARTH

 CURVE OF THE EARH

In the curve of the highway that clings to the ocean’s dark flank,
on a Friday when the sun bled slowly into the waves,
you turned your head, beloved, and your eyes seized mine—
two black suns that swallowed the road, the salt wind, the fear.
Terror rose in me like a tide about to break the hull,
yet how wild you were, how splendid in your recklessness,
a storm wearing the face of a woman,
and I, never so weak, never so willingly broken,
a man of sand collapsing before the first touch of your gaze.Without you I would dissolve into spindrift,
scatter across the indifferent sea,
or fall forever through the hollow throat of the sky.
But here I am, in paradise, orbiting you,
a helpless moon caught in the gravity of your eyes—
your eyes, your deep, devouring eyes.We followed the road that bends like a lover’s spine along the water,
and you outshone the dying sun,
your voice rising with the ancient pulse of the waves,
the sea itself keeping time for your song.
The light sank; you kept burning,
a star that had chosen the earth for its brief, fierce home.Look upward now: the stars are alive up there,
throbbing like hearts in the black chest of night.
I wonder what waits on the far side of that darkness—
a country of pure light, perhaps,
where two souls who have circled each other long enough
finally become the light itself,
weightless, endless, complete.