"A gift is not to be commanded"
--Robertson Davies

It is too easy to
pretend coolness.
Keep the mind holy
and anesthetized.
Lock down the chariot of the mouth
in its endless poverty of always wanting.

Ignore the whirring
tick of the heart.
Hide the urgency of the body
beneath buttons and zippers
and forget that we are made up
of elements that spark volcanic eruptions.

Until you came the Bedouin taming
the desert of my body teaching me
that we are all things natural.

The skin only sand.
Taut and delicate as glass
and the eyes flint igniting on contact

I have all but forgotten the seismic madness
of it the cataclysms collisions
and rhythms of:
bodies that must.

The act so primal
so violent
so deliciously raw
it was the subject of the first poem
scrawled across cave walls

But the cognate need always
comes back with your searching lips
the touch of tongue
the incantation of your hips
and in your wake
the scent of earth
and taste of ocean.

We loved each other so hard
we altered the landscapes,
sandcastles with my breasts
and temples at my womanhood
and learned what it meant again to be animals.


`SAS