Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest Heave...Image via Wikipedia

Today is Marc’s birthday and I wanted to give him something special. Many years ago, I used to write poetry, but after a very painful loss, I no longer wrote: I didn’t have the heart to, not even for Marc, the love of my life. However, a great deal of healing has taken place for me because of this man, so I thought, “Maybe I’ll give this a try once more.”.

This poem is about the first time I saw Marc after he’d broken up with his fiancee and I had been out of town for two weeks. I had mentioned that someone had broken into my apartment while I had been away and I might ask him over for protection if he was willing. As I asked this, something happened to his eyes that I’ve never seen in anyone’s before or since: His eyes went from bright, electric blue to a soft yet intense deep blue-grey, but not just as a color change. It was as if a curtain went across his eyes… At least that’s what I thought at first. Later, I learned that what I had seen was a curtain lifted from his eyes and the grey I see whenever Marc looks at me, is only for me: Others see Marc’s eyes as a startling blue. Whether I understood this intellectually or not at the time didn’t matter, because my heart understood very clearly what I was seeing and see to this day.

So Marc, here is my gift to you on this, your birthday: The first poem I have written in 20 years and the first love poem in 25. It’s also the second one I have ever written… I really hope it pleases you.

Your Eyes

There came a moment
When first we met
After parting once,
And I saw the sky
Had become your eyes
In the time
I had been gone:

Dazzling blue starlight
Parted as a curtain
And a shadowed Heaven
Vast and profound,
Misted grey,
Intensely sparkling,
Opened before me;

The stars of that
Empyrean deep
Holding…
Private secrets
Of the kind
The sun whispers
To the earth
In solar winds
Coloring the night.

In that instant,
I dreamt of flying
In that starlit
And shaded azure kingdom;
To be the only creature
Ever permitted
To traverse your sky.

I wanted to know
Every star that glittered
Within that mystical space,
And I knew that forever
Held no time long enough
To chart that celestial sphere.

But I longed
To know those secrets;
I yearned for them
To be mine
And only mine.
I wanted to hear
Each starsong,
To travel the winds
Of your soul,
To be caressed by each flare
Of passion to erupt,
And for your breath
To color my nights.

Secrets, revealed to me
And me alone…
I wanted to become
The only other initiate
In a cabal of two:
For Heaven
To speak to me
And I to become
The Garden upon
Which Heaven rests.
And I greedily
Wanted all time to end.

It was then,
The essence
Of all I thought was me
Was melted away
By the fires
Distant and near
In your eyes.
When next I looked
To see myself
My heart knew only joy.
Because, you see,
Time had been taken away:
The Heaven
I had just discovered
In your eyes,
Was the Heaven
In which
I had found Paradise.

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