To his Love

(For Ifeanyi and Ogugua)

My love, lay your head gently down upon my bosom,

For now all the world is ours. Here now, where your eyes sparkle

Like distant stars from an unknown galaxy.

Misty like dew on a lovely spring morning,

They arrest me, spin me, and let me go.

An oasis in the Kalahari Desert, they draw me

Into refreshing pools of blissfulness … oyster shells snapping open,

And letting their pearls glitter.

Long ago in a Roman coliseum, a gladiator will ensnare

His foe in a vanquishing net. But this is no bloody web.

It is love’s intricate threads. And I willing prisoner, gaze,

Dream, meditate, and imagine worlds into being.

Worlds. Worlds. And more worlds—of you and me,

Traveling, floating, caroling in wonderful clouds of bliss.

And night, tender night stretches into night.

The moon lingers on willingly—eternal sentry

Over our window. Over this first night of nights.

I travel now through paths of yesterday

Of our first telephone conversation, of your words

Dropping like honey dew in grasping ears.

I travel through paths of silent longings,

Wish-prayers, and eloquent imaginations.

I travel through time, through space, as distances

Disappear, and swift from a rented car I disembark.

A raspy knock unfurled itself on your door,

Torch-flare of nerve endings at the razor-edge of bated breath,

I breathed in and out, and out and in, my heart blowing bellows.

And when paradise swung open on the hinges of a door,

All I could do was to go back to my earliest beginnings,

A child in sweet rapture, crying,

O God! O God! O God!

For so sweet was your presence, an eternal sun

Breaking forth on the wings of earliest dawn,

And words painstakingly forged at the forges of the cogito shattered,

Faded into nothingness. A day. Two. Maybe two and a half.

But so brief was time, for no sooner had I entered

Your frangipani presence, was I thrust out of Eden.

The door slid shut. And you daisy of my soul spread cheer

Into a dull Boston morning. The halo of your figure appeared

And appeared again in the rearview, and, then, it was gone

Like some sylph flitting through naked ether.

Asphalt spread before me, endless nothingness,

Hundreds of miles home. Seconds became eons.

And distance became light-years. Eternity limbered along

Like a stupid, punch-drunk snail.

And time and distance became my mortal foes.

But sweet heaven gave reprieve.

My terrible sentence came to an end. And not a moment

Sooner, for my heart had performed countless cartwheels a day,

And poor thing, its Nunc Dimittis was near.

Lay down your head then, gently upon my bosom,

My love. Let me hold your hands tenderly, and more tenderly

Let me kiss your forehead tenderly, and more tenderly

Let me kiss your nose tenderly, and more tenderly

Let me kiss your lips tenderly, and more tenderly

Let me kiss your chin tenderly, and more tenderly

Let me kiss your throat tenderly, and more tenderly

Let me kiss your bosom tenderly, and more tenderly

This festal night, for your aloe vera skin threatens to melt away,

Like some bewitched beauty cursed to slip away at the strike of dawn.

But I know you are no spectral beauty, for your marigold presence

Fills this oasis of enchantment.

O love! O love!

Lay your head gently down upon my bosom.

Let night turn into day and day into night

And let the moon forever stand sentry over our window

And let no one disturb this hour of paradisal bliss.

Ah! my love, heaven itself has given you to me

And mortal man that I am, what can I do but worship you,

To tenderly hold these delicate hands of yours

Now, now, now, and down all of this winding path.

Ah! my love, lay your head gently down upon my bosom.

Let us be for each other through time, through space,

Through pain, through laughter, through joy, through tears,

Through hope, bliss, and blast, through the entire

Run of our earthly experience. Until the dawn of dawns.

O, until the dawn of dawns.

Ah! my love, lay your head gently

Down upon my bosom. Let us love,

For the night has just begun.