"Feeling thy presence, I shall come out of my sepulcher...
Rise, softly moving creature, and let me contemplate thy beauty."
--Hafiz

my hair grown too long for walking
I've polished your tomb with ends
all night with my sleep

marble shimmers my eyes
as mist parts door opens
your valiant stride


I arise, rinsed clean by your galloping dreams.
I confess: my empty hand is a sleep-thief,
braiding your hair with the minutes of tenderness
afforded to me by the meandering wind,
by the rush of your delicate countenance.


I have no curls
but by your fingers
sent from root to tip

touching globe's edge
I'll planet-wrap this day
amber-red your sky


This ancient skin softens nightly
as your visits shade my marble expression;
the graceful velocity of your bare footsteps
sends me spinning towards diminutive Mercury,
whose shy and eccentric orbit around the colossal sun
held its astronomical mystery until Einstein
unfurled the crystal-clear curtains of Relativity.
But even these sharp calculations
quickly melt into crimson dream-puddles:
flung by the centrifugal force of your smile,
I surf the time-rift of your eyes.


my iris loomed reflections
I send out to slip between your words
pull back these clouds

our convolutions merge at perihelion
cradled in space-time's sepulcher
paralleled our lines meet here

12/12/2007

Author's Note: italic stanzas are by Tom, the others are mine.This collaboration began during a poetic conversation we were having about one of Tom’s poems. Tom surprised me by sending the quote that preludes this poem. I did not recognize it at first, and thought it was his! He told me it was on the tomb of Hafiz and that he had found it on my own website! (I copied it from the tomb of Hafiz in when we visited it in Iran!) The collaboration then began and was completed over the several days that have followed, until being finished today. You too can see the tomb of Hafiz

Posted on 12/12/2007
Copyright © 2024 Kathleen Wilson