In motion

When it is new, love is
That first shock of forgetting
The world, the hot coffee you are holding
That has spilt down your arm,
The sandwich halfway
To your hungering maw
After no breakfast and no lunch,
Sometime close to no dinner.

It is the faint touch of heat
On petrol, the sudden surge of flame
Roaring through head and chest
And out your mouth
In a jumble of jargon
Best unsaid.

It is the sinking of body heat
Down south to toes
That suddenly need warmth
And fingers that have lost all tactile sense.

When love dawns,
It shifts suddenly from
Pastel palette to blistering brightness,
Decisive and undeniable
As the unbiddable heart.

Then it mellows into a noontide
Of shared habits and familiar comforts:
The rhythm of sea on sand packed
By centuries of feet treading in the shallows.

It matures into evenings where clouds
Drift entwined with darkling sky,
Where purpose is good, yet optional.

It sits at quiet suppers where conversation
Is but embellishment to contented sighs
In a bed warmed by two sets of breath,
Limbs loosely woven together,
Heartbeats timed
To a well-remembered tempo,
Like your first slow dance,
Or the time that you joined
Without the fevered urgency
Of impatient exploration
But all the expertise taken
Of each other's bodies.

It breaks suddenly at the end
Like lightning splitting rock.

One of you does not wake
And the other scrambles to
Hold off the electrical strike,
Then, failing that, to
Escape the particular horror
Of a single beating heart,
Only one set of tearful breaths,
A solo scream
In a wilderness made
Threatening and unsafe once more.

It is the weeping
Of one who is bereft
Of haven, warmth and goodness.

It is, in the end, the vunerability
Of eyeing that road without seeming end
Knowing only one pair of feet
Will tread it until exhaustion
Claims you, drags you to the gate
Where you hold high hope
That the other waits faithfully.

But will it all be the same?
Is this a cycle that will
Continue in the afterlife
With no bodies,
No heartbeats,
No breaths
To share?

We will only know this
End of all ends
If we remain

In motion:
Holding sun and moon
And effervescent stars
Aloft to light the way.

In motion.
Alone
But hopeful.
Because, even in this
It's brokenness,
Love lights hope
Stubborn as all the world's
Most ill-tempered mules.