Forty Aspects

RK VEDA
HOLISTIC (DYNAMIC SILENCE)
 
A glance
out the window,
as a leaf falls,
and you walk by.
I never saw you before
but my breath stops,
the world stills
and for a moment,
there is nothing moving
but hope.
 
SAMA VED
FLOWING WAKEFULNESS-FLOWING
 
The days pass
phone calls, FTP and Quark
but still, now and then
a tune calls
and I find, later, that
I was staring,
listening to your memory
 
YAJUR-VEDA
OFFERING and CREATING
 
Will I ever see her again?
You have to wonder
and maybe, this time
the sun will shine
just right,
something clever
will make her laugh
and a new love will be
quietly born,
brimming with
light and strength.
 
ATHARVA VEDA
REVERBERATING WHOLENESS-REVERBERATING
 
The heart
waking up, alert again
ringing the air
with the sound
of the eternal drumbeat
that is the event horizon
of the emergence
of feeling.
 
SHIKSHA
EXPRESSING
 
Hi, how are you.
My name is Paul
I would like to mention
that I adore you, and
that to me you are a perfect, lyrical
manifestation of God.
 
Do you come here often?
 
KALP
TRANSFORMING
 
A face that hasn't moved
that you've only seen
floating by,
can suddenly, in conversation,
become a show of lights, twinkling,
in a fascinating array of meaning and shape.
Suddenly that beauty has history,
seventy new, wonderful
angles, shapes, moods and stories.
 
Just say anything,
please.
 
VYAKARAN
EXPANDING
 
A sentence from you,
subject verb object
one from me, also SVO,
A passive construction here,
an interjection there,
a wholeness in my statement
completion in yours,
every phrase
a version of totality
every word a family,
between each sound,
four qualities:
disappearance,
infinite silence,
dynamic possibility,
and the new order,
so while
following our words back
to their heart
we both get bigger.
 
NIRUKT
SELF-REFERRAL
 
This is my story
the fall onstage in Cedar Falls, Iowa,
the tennis tournaments
the three hundred and fifty poems
this is my sense of humor
my hands, weaving the story.
this is my tone, my cadence,
my verbal caress, my honesty.
the way I love this topic
is the way I would
love you.
 
CHHAND
MEASURING, QUANTIFYING
 
Just now you are a mile
and a half away, at the store
looking at a pomegranate.
Now you are 250 yards away,
at a stoplight, remembering
that you were supposed to pick up
pink nail polish.
Now you are ten feet away
in line at the lunchroom
and I see you, choosing
black olives.
Now you are a foot away
Hi, I'm Paul, I think this is Tango music,
unless there is a tight turn and
for a moment or two
we finally touch and
now you are not away at all.
 
Holding you I feel that my ribs could
slide between your ribs
and we would mesh
like an ancient puzzle
into one being
with a single, soft, slowly
beating heart.
 
JYOTISH
ALL-KNOWING
 
There is light
in the air
when I first see you.
There is light on our heads
when we first talk, first smile.
There is light on the table
on our first date,
light on the road
on our way to Iowa City.
There is light,
like a small, soft, Milky Way,
flowing between our hearts,
light that the angels
like to bathe, swim and play in,
light that fills the room with feeling
whenever we look at each other.
When I was born
a light went on
in a cosmic computer
guiding me home
to this moment
when
I would say I love you,
when what I really mean is
you fill my heart with light.
 
NYAYA
DISTINGUISHING, DECIDING
 
The question is,
does she like pink or blue?
Is this the kind of woman
who wants to be surprised
with a little gift every day
or does she just want to hear from me?
If I sacrifice the petals
of twenty roses
and lay a carpet for her to step on
outside her door
first thing in the morning,
will she melt, laugh and cry
or will she just say
it was too expensive.
Looking for the balance point,
between what I enjoy giving
because it expresses my heart
and what she likes to get
because it opens hers.
 
VAISHESHIK
SPECIFYING
 
You ask why I love you,
as if, for some reason
I have to have a reason.
Of course, it's because
I am loving, and want
to feel my heart flowing.
But still, it's also that
your hands are so small
they can hardly be considered
hands at all.
How can anything so little
still function?
It's because of the delicate, golden hairs
on the outline of your face
in the sunlight,
it's because your skin is so soft
that my fingers disappear
in touching you,
it's because
you have this repose
where the world turns
but you, catlike,
sit, unmoved, a silent warmth,
breathing quietly,
watching me with clear eyes,
it's because you stand
and cross the room
and just can't walk across the space
without adding to that simple chore
several, apparently unnecessary
graceful movements,
only a woman could put so much beauty
into picking up a pillow,
without even knowing it,
it's because when the world rumbles on,
machinery and all,
you stop, listen, and put out a hand
to catch some falling tear
that needs attention,
it's because you are all things adorable,
perfect, noble, timeless,
it's because the infinite, creative
power of love shines in and through you
and when I see you
I feel hope, happiness, expansion,
my chest gets bigger, I breathe easier
and I know that the world is beautiful
because somewhere on one
two foot wide space
of the enormous globe
there stands a woman
full of beauty, enough
to clarify, and justify
the entire earthly project.
That's why I love you.
 
SAMKHYA
ENUMERATING
 
1362 phone calls
27 movies
19 lunches at Everybody's
10 trips to Iowa City
2 camping trips
15 dances
310 times turning to the left and seeing you
4 times watching you sleep
897 slow kisses
1025 medium length kisses
27 really long kisses
419 little pecks
267 times holding hands
97 times wondering where you are
219 daydreams about you
32 letters
112 notes in class
17 trips to the laundromat
7 big arguments
32 heated discussions
7 tickle fights
4 pillow fights
5 games of monopoly
3 tennis lessons
2 trips to see your family
219 tears
10,896 laughs
2952 hugs
234 long discussions
and just one love.
 
YOGA
UNIFYING
 
Where you walk, I will walk.
When you turn to the left,
I will turn left.
There will be days when,
like a silver herd of fish,
we will both react to the same wave
and turn, and move together,
or, like a pack of finches in a pet shop,
hearing a trilled whistle,
we will both turn with one note
of inquiry, toward the sound.
Other days
we will not seem to move together.
You will be going to the store,
and I'll be at the computer.
Or I'll be getting gas
while you close the sale.
But still, the inner rhythm
of your move will be the same
as the inner cadence
of my sway,
and my arm raising
for the book will
somehow be connected
to your breathing
as you climb the ladder
to the skylight.
 
KARMA MIMANSA
ANALYSING
 
Okay, so you're late.
Am I ticked because you said you wouldn't be late,
or because you always get ticked when I'm late.
Is it because you get away with stuff I can't get away with,
or because I don't really care if you're late,
but it bothers me that it doesn't bother me because
that means that you get away with more stuff because
I'm more easy going?
But how can I say I'm easy going when stuff that
doesn't bother me bothers me
just because it would bother you?
Or does it bother me that you're late
because once when I was six months old
one parent thought the other parent
was going to get up and walk the baby
and they both fell asleep.
with pillows over their heads
and I experienced "late" for the first time?
Is it just Rahu in the first house
that makes me think that you being late
somehow reflects on me?
Or is that I love you, I miss you,
I had this ice cream cone ready to surprise you,
and now the cone is just a sticky memory.
Or maybe..
What about...
What if....
 
Anyway,
I'm glad you're back.
 
VEDANT
LIVELY ABSOLUTE (LIVING WHOLENESS--I-NESS or BEING)
 
In the middle of the party
during the conversations, the laughter
I look over at you,
entertaining the couch crowd,
with your beauty, your wit,
just as I have been
on my side of the room,
joking and singing,
and for a moment,
although we aren't even standing together
there's that strong, sweet, quiet knowledge
that you and I are together,
in one world,
a level of our own,
silent, quiet, complete,
underlying all the festivity.
 
GANDHARVA VED
INTEGRATING, HARMONIZING
 
If people could hear the note,
the sound that things make,
because the physics people say
"it's all waves, don't you know?"
If they could hear that sound,
then they could sit in the room
when you, with your high clear note
mixed with rich, deep, mysterious timbres
and exquisite, soaring melodies,
walk up next to me,
with my, sombre, steady,
metronomic measuring,
along with a baritone lyric,
and an occasional tenor laughter,
and listen to the music,
as we inquire, like violins and cellos
and answer, like drums and cymbals
and blend, like a rich
symphonic poem.
 
DHANUR-VEDA
INVINCIBLE, PROGRESSIVE
 
When I think of seeing you
and you think of seeing me,
when I walk to the car to visit you
and when you straighten out
the cotton placemats,
when you speak of me, think of me,
when someone asks me
"How is it going with her?",
we move in eternal strength,
we stand in solid rock,
we are what
the ancients called
the adamant, unmoving space
that fixes the world.
We are the definition
and the ground state,
we bring shape and substance,
we define the universe
and give all the people
that know us
a basis for hope.
 
STHAPATYA VEDA
ESTABLISHING
 
Build a house
made of two hearts
with rooms
made of thoughts, hopes, dreams
and laughter.
Start an addition
on the side of growing
happiness, more success,
supportive behaviors,
discussions, breakthroughs.
Put down a floor
of respect, care, understanding.
Paint the walls
with passion, imagination,
and creative, daily contribution.
Put in a furnace
of warm consideration, with
a second setting for simple
fond regard, depending on the season.
Build the walls, with protective
anticipation.
Cut a door,
so that communication
can breathe, in and out.
Open a window
so that you can gaze out,
side by side.
Put up a roof
to keep your tinder dry
for action,
and your fire burning
for comfort.
Make it all
in accord with the design of the universe
and you will have built a love,
a love to last.
 
HARITA SAMHITA
NOURISHING
 
I take this spoon
full of soup,
put in in your mouth,
and feed you like a baby.
 
Suddenly,
the world stops,
my breathing halts,
and for a moment,
staring at you,
I wish that I could be
a spoonful of soup,
just once,
and thereby become
a little part of you.
 
BHEL SAMHITA
DIFFERENTIATING
 
Why is your hand so small, your waist so thin?
 
Why are you so softly angled
where it seems logical
to be straight?
Why are you so lyrical,
when it makes sense to be functional?
 
Why does the line from your armpit to your waist
act like a slow river,
and curve like there's no real hurry?
While with me it's straight
as a no time to waste canal?
 
Why are you soft when it's more durable to be hard?
Why that tiny little voice, hey, who can hear you?
 
Why do so many things happen to you
that are competely invisible?
So, there's no bleeding, probably you're okay, right?
 
Why do you stand by the window and gaze?
Why can I work, no matter what you say?
 
Why are we so different, it doesn't make sense,
unless it's just the old, cosmic story,
the differentiation, or clarification
of two immovable objects,
so that the unstoppable force of love
can make them one again
in a big way.
 
KASHYAP SAMHITA
EQUIVALENCY
 
It is equally beautiful
that you look out of the window
and sigh, thinking of last October
when all of these trees
let down the leaves they hold all year,
and wonder, how the years go on,
in a flow of change,
while your face is lit by the sunrise
and your hand, curved,
delicately touches the windowsill,
as it is beautiful
for me to make seven calls in twenty minutes,
coordinate the schedules of four people
for a meeting, plus advise a student,
send an e-mail or two,
plus laugh at some funny headline
while planning a new dance move
just for you.
It is equally beautiful
for you to leap, and turn,
and bend in your jazz class,
flexible and lyrical,
right there with the instructor
pushing, inspiring each other,
as all of you turn
quickly to the left,
like a colorful school of
precious fish,
as it is beautiful
for me to hit the first shot halfway
to the service line, dive for the second,
barely chip it over, fall,
get up on my knees and yet
still hit back the third shot,
laughing and breathing
like crazy.
It is equally beautiful
for you to sneak in to my room
when I am out, take a photo
of the "before"
and then completely organize,
clean, and straighten up the place
and then shoot the "after"
as it is beautiful
for me to constantly leave
tennis balls in your truck bed,
in the trees outside of your house,
or in the seat of the plane
before your flying lesson,
and then to climb
up on the roof,
out of the building
over your office
and hang a ball on a string
with a bow
so it hangs outside your window.
 
Your love is equally beautiful
as mine is beautiful,
and those two beauties
added together,
equal an even greater beauty.
 
CHARAK SAMHITA
BALANCING -- HOLDING TOGETHER, SUPPORTING
 
Imagine that we have no bodies,
just a couple of colorful clouds
clinging together,
barely touching the ground.
If I lean too far to the left
and start to fall,
like a low cloud
sinking into a fog,
will you lean to the right
and balance me out?
Or will you sometimes
fall with me, knowing that
I need to recover on my own
realizing that there is
some trend towards descent
and fix it on my own
and not expect you to compensate
and thereby I'll grow
and thereby you will
still have made me more balanced
but in a different way?
And if we do fall
we just fall to rest
like two beautiful clouds,
entwined in the sunset,
and then float together,
a sparkling, conscious presence
in the night,
until we gently
rise up, in the early sunlight
and make something
glorious to see.

SUSHRUT SAMHITA
SEPARATING
 
When you are leaving I never know
until afterwards.
You are sad for several days before,
but I just stay happy, enjoying every moment.
But the day after you go,
When I lift up the phone to call,
or I expect to hear your footstep
outside my door after dinner,
and then don't,
that's when I know.
And then, like a hollow jar
I wander through the day
with the wind blowing
in and out of a transparent shell,
and I miss you.
Then I take up a quieter, simpler, smaller life,
like a dry South Seas sponge,
waiting for the water to return,
baking in the sun, seeing new horizons,
with strange land creatures walking by,
waiting until the day,
when you soak me with your presence
and I spring to life again,
separate from the dry, simple world,
and rejoin you in a multicolored, laughing,
flowing ocean of love.
 
VAGBHATT SAMHITA
COMMUNICATION, ELOQUENCE
 
When you stand
at the barre
and bend like a swan's neck
in the sunlight,
that tells me something.
 
When you put out your arm
and pick up an apple
but one tiny finger
lingers above the fray,
floating, poised, not gripping,
that tells me something, too.
 
When I see your back,
long and beautiful,
perfectly straight,
there is communication.
 
When you suddenly smile
at something someone said,
then I know.
 
When you sit, staring at your baby,
the two of you in a private world,
I hear a timeless story of love.
 
If you sit on a porch
with the sun behind you
the golden light framing your face
through your hair,
your mouth slightly parted
and your cheek so quietly pink,
then I remember something.
 
The things you say
without ever talking,
they speak to me sometimes.
 
Maybe I never get to tell you,
but sometimes you are so beautiful,
I feel an ache of happiness in my chest,
I get tears in my eyes, no kidding,
and for one quiet moment,
my life is beautiful,
just because I saw you
and got the message.
 
 
MADHAV NIDAN SAMHITA
DIAGNOSING
 
What's wrong?
Is it something I said?
Did I forget to get something,
to do something I said I would do?
Is it something I did
or didn't do,
or is it really nothing,
it's just a mood,
it's nothing I can fix,
like a guy likes to fix?
Do you just want someone to listen,
to hold you?
Did I mention that I love you,
That you make the black and white
of business and bills
into a technicolor party,
just knowing that you're there
to do it all with?
Maybe we need to get out of town,
take a trip, get out in the woods.
Maybe we need to go dancing
throw snowballs,
have a pillow fight.
Maybe we should rip up our bills,
throw them away,
and run around the living room, laughing.
Maybe we'll get some butterscotch syrup,
drip it slowly over ice cream
and feed each other.
Let's get a movie,
sit cuddled up and share popcorn
with vata churna on it.
Or maybe we both
just need to go to bed earlier,
who knows?
But, whatever the diagnosis,
I've got the cure,
if love, taking
form, shape, and action
can help,
and if not, I'll hold your hand
while you examine your inner world
like a self-illuminated globe
and bring the thing to rest.
 
SHARNGADHAR SAMHITA
SYNTHESIZING
 
What makes a house
a home
is what you do in it
to make it
homey,
like this love
isn't something
we can just come home to,
it takes imagination, creativity,
new energy every day.
Just like in getting married,
you don't enter a condition
but start a process.
You can spend your whole life
marrying each other,
finding new synergies, unities,
new things to give each other,
ways of being supportive, understanding
the things that you recognize as loving,
and then giving them to her,
and also coming up with guesses
on your own, doing things
that don't make sense,
but do make love,
like flower petals left on her pillowcase,
a tiny note in her pocket,
or the ten foot banner hung over the railing
celebrating her return.
 
 
BHAVA-PRAKASH SAMHITA
ENLIGHTENING
 
When I see you, I feel love, inspiration, adoration.
Something about you makes me laugh
and ache inside.
Laugh because you are so ridiculously beautiful,
ache to hold that beauty close to my heart.
What is it about this love thing
that offers so much hope,
this desire to adore, to hold,
to become one with another?
It's not to join the other
but to join the self,
reflected in the other,
her beauty is only
your beauty,
her divinity only your
divine vision.
Nothing that you see
is other than what you are
inside.
So when you see her
you want her close because
the separation of your beautiful heart
from your beautiful love
can't be forever,
those two that are really one
ache to join and fill each other
to become one unified
field of pure
conscious light
again.
 
 
UPANISHAD
TRANSCENDING
 
Looking at you, I stop, wait,
everything slows,
and I am reminded,
I have memory,
the deep, ancient, cosmic,
healing kind
that reconnects.
You bring me closer
to my own
inner quiet
and then the pure,
unlimited field
of happiness
that waits there
bursts out, through
the thinnest wall ever
in consciousness,
and I laugh on the
outpouring waves
of love.
 
ARANYAK
STIRRING
 
You walk through the room
and I see what you don't,
since everything looks normal
after you pass,
except for the many
pairs of eyes
that follow you,
and the string of hearts
that float after you, day
dreaming.
 
You walk through the room,
and like a beautiful perfume
your memory
stops activity,
takes every man
to a new recognition
of this beautiful world,
and reminds every woman
of her role
in sharing
timeless grace.
 
You walk through the room
and no one moves differently
but everyone
has been moved.
 
BRAHMANA
STRUCTURING
 
What we are making
is made of compliments,
positive, supportive feelings,
dreams and wishes,
shared in a quiet talk.
 
What we are building
is habits of remembrance,
consideration and anticipation
of each other's needs.
 
What we are gathering together
is two hearts into one
lifelong project,
a crescendo of feeling,
growing like a tree
toward something monumental.
 
What we are putting up
is a home that will carry us
through all of the changes
that we know await us,
through all these upcoming seasons
the laughter, the tears,
the surprises and the routine.
 
What we plan is a golden
world, that will float
like a bubble around us,
to soften, and beautify,
everything that we do together.
 
What we are making
with all this
is just what the heart
was made to make,
what we are making
is love.
 
 
ITIHAS
BLOSSOMING OF TOTALITY
 
Little do we know, you and I
the stem gene and the petal gene
when we meet, that
we two together
could make something great
that the world will never see
without us working
together on it.
After all,
I already see my beautiful life
ahead of me, what I can do,
what I bring to the world
like a long green arc in the sky
what I can do has upliftment,
a curving, extending, lilt to it.
Yes, by the time I'm through
I will reach into the sky and point
into the endless blue.
And after all, you know, too
that you are all that there is to know
about yellow petals,
their symmerical curve,
their fine velvet texture,
their subtle moisture,
their sunlike, radiant color,
you've got all that down.
How could we ever have known
that together, we would
reach into the sky
and blossom into a
symmetrical explosion
of timeless beauty.
 
 
PURAN
ANCIENT, ETERNAL
 
"The world is completed created,
maintained and destroyed
in a micro-second."
Hear that?
that's the sound of the quantum guys
peeling out of the garage
built by the cueless
billiards playing
particle physicists,
and laying a patch of rubber
all the way to metaphysics,
leaving the rest of us wondering,
if those Flipped SU(5) Superstring
theorists are right,
and the world starts anew
every instant,
then even ancient history
isn't history, anymore,
but just a slower description
of what is happening all the time.
And if that's true, then
there's an omnipresence
of every possible possibility
in every second
and therefore
we need to be constantly
alert for the possibility that
we could as happy as possible
together, anytime
and remember,
that our love could be
as beautiful, as legendary,
and as enormous
as any love ever was,
in a micro-second,
which is how
every teenage love
discovers the same cosmic love
all over again
as if it never existed before
which is true
because there is no before
or after
something that wonderful,
since every true love
is a completely new manifestation
of the most beautiful thing
ever possible.
 
SMRITI
MEMORY
 
Hi.
Say, you remind me of someone.
I think it was this curly haired girl
that I got married to when I was 7 years old.
You know, we got dressed up and
pretended to get married.
 
Looking at you,
I am reminded of my mother.
that little nose, so adorable.
 
You remind me that
life isn't only cash flow and spreadsheets,
it's also an occasional gaze
into peaceful eyes
that laugh and play.
 
This reminds me that I wanted to ask someone
to go to a movie
and dancing in Iowa City
this weekend.
 
You remind me that once I thought
that when I got older
I would have a beautiful wife
and that when I looked at her
my heart would seem to float
upward, and I would laugh inside
and reach out my arm
and pull her close.
 
You remind me
that I have feelings
that what I really wanted
was to love someone
with a pure, untroubled,
constant flame
that never stops
warming and blessing her.
 
You remind me
that, deep inside
I have love,
and that,
even though
I can be competely silent
in solitude
when I step out of the door
and note
that God made such a beautiful day
and put you in the middle
of the high noon sunlight
all that dark silence
lights up in laughter
and I can enjoy the waves
of being alone
with you.
 
You remind me
that I was born
not only to discover
and manifest
my own significance
but to be a part of something
significant
as well.
 
Being reminded
we step back into the
ancient memory
which is the oldest task
ever. If you remember
everything,
you put it all
back together.
But it's not every thing
you remember
it's the origin of all things,
which isn't a thing at all,
just the ultimate memory
since the purest memory
is purity itself
the thing that we love to find
because memory
and love were made
to help us find it.
 
 
RK VEDA PRATISHAKHYA
ALL-PERVADING WHOLENESS
 
Rising early,
while I'm still asleep,
you walk in to the living room,
and open your box of
oriental brushes,
and set it up
 
in wholeness.
 
The sun just starts to peek
over the horizon,
while you bathe,
and soak, for a while,
before drying off,
and then returning to me,
to meditate,
before starting
your real day
 
in wholeness.
 
Then, getting up,
you stretch,
not knowing that
I am quietly watching
your beautiful shape
as you walk
into the hallway
and I smile, and
stretch, too,
and start to stir
 
in wholeness.
 
Then you sit by the window
and start to paint
and while the world outside
starts to be reflected
on the paper inside
 
in wholeness,
 
I quietly look
around the corner,
see your serious
eye
and your trained hand
deeply focussed
in doing something beautiful,
 
in wholeness.
 
And though I don't tell you
right away
I am reminded that
I love you so
 
in wholeness.
 
 
SHUKL-YAJUR-VEDA PRATISHAKHYA
SILENCING, SHARING AND SPREADING
 
There is something about
a couple in love
that settles the world,
calms the air,
and brings a kind of peace.
Just that wholeness
answers a number of questions,
resolves issues,
completes things,
and everyone who sees the twosome
shares in that happiness
since at least somewhere, someone is happy,
taken care of, loved, nurtured.
Two people together and enjoying it
silences doubts, shares happiness,
and spreads joy in the world.
 
 
ATHARVA VEDA PRATISHAKHYA
UNFOLDING
 
Like a flower opening
you open me,
bringing to light
things that I thought should be hidden.
And when those folds unfurl
we both see
that there was nothing there to hide
just folds. Just a turning in, due
to fears or self-protection.
But now
those fresh, tender petals
no longer hidden
unfurl
like a sail in the wind
and billow, and fill
and I become a full, open person
who has stretched and reached, again,
like a flower opening
and, because of you
I will no longer
hide from the world
my inordinate and
timeless beauty.
 
 
ATHARVA VEDA PRATISHAKHYA
DISSOLVING
 
When we take this love
apart,
when we part forever,
when we no longer date or
stay married,
or even seem to care about each other,
when we fall and die
and our hands
can no longer hold together
whenever we part and it all seems over
we have only dissolved
the solid stuff
but the liquid love
still flows forever.
I never stop loving you
nothing is ever lost,
it only changes shape.
You are always my great love,
we are always full with
what we made together
and all of the elements
that flowed out of us
while we loved,
flow on to make
more love,
roll to the end of the universe
in wavelets, waves, and tidal waves
of love
and bounce back,
blessing the world forever
because the love we made is still
the same, timeless love,
and even if it seems
to get dissolved,
it never gets erased.
 
 
KRISHN YAJUR VEDA PRITISHAKHYA
OMNIPRESENT
 
You might think that I
have forgotten you, but you
are all that I know.
 
 
SAMA VEDA PRATISHKHYA
UNMANIFESTING THE PARTS BUT MANIFESTING THE WHOLE
 
This poem is not about
Paula, Nancy, Sandy,
or even enigmatic Patty
at ages 6, 8, 12 and 14.
Not about blue-eyed Judy,
or, believe it or not,
not even about Diann,
the mysterious volcano,
It's not about Katharine,
dark and dramatic,
Nor Renee, standing on
the Iowa riverbank,
Nor Pam, the disco princess,
Little Donna, or
Kathy, thin and soft,
Not about Meadow, despite the years,
or Lali, and her deep laughter,
or Diane, like an Egyptian poem,
Not about Justine,
despite that mystical flowing,
heart to heart,
Not about the mystery woman,
seen only from the back, receding,
Not about Leslie,
running, instantly, across the court,
or Cat, who probably still
owes me a massage,
or about the world's
biggest heart (Hilary),
or Patricia, my faithful friend,
not about Kristen
and her supportive energy,
or Deborah,
a beauty of historic
moment,
Not about anybody that I love
or have loved
or will ever love.
 
It's not about anybody,
it's about everybody
that you or I have ever loved
and what they do
to make you feel love
just like a radio
brings in the sound
from the air,
someone you love
lets you hear something
that no one can see.
Yes, even though
there's no jungle beat
or tango playing band,
no symphony of strings
standing there behind her
you still hear the music.
Just like that
someone that you love
opens a door,
takes a shape,
finds an angle where
just for moment
it is the door to a great beauty
it is the shape that a goddess would take
it is the angle whereby
your heart feels an infinite force
and sees a beauty beyond time.
Something happens to you
and she tunes you in
to what she represents,
which is all the power
that love has to unify, to reconnect,
and to make this world beautiful.
She opens your heart
and something very big
wakes up in there
and says, "Hello, my beauty,"
right back to her,
back to the same,
big, cosmic thing,
pouring out of her.
 
 
 
PJS, 5/98