“Penelope is sometimes a shadow of your dream.” - Joan Margarit
From Port de la Selva,
a storm cloud shifts and I watch
the shape set sail from distant shore
your ship come home.
This love is an old old story.
Her story lasted twenty years
and one-hundred-and-eight drops of tears
each night through shut eyes would intrude
a scratched and silent film looping sepia nude.
Ten years to win ten more to return
and always he could feel her yearn
under sweat and metal mail
her fingertips played a gentle tale
across his back.
She is a shadow in my dreaming.
Beside my bed your fragrance teeming
preserved in a treasure chest-of-drawers
a secret nightly uncapping your scent transforms
a thousand years of swooning blood in one flash flood.
Words you write lie in bed with me at night
and impress upon your pillow
safe from the light of morn a hollow.
Safe from the blue-gray waters’ thorn
this old love is in many languages reborn
from the Mar Mediterrania to the Ak Deniz
gently billowing east a silky underwater breeze
calling coral currents and the darkest deep.
This old old love is a story.
first published in Barcelona Ink. Nov. 2012, Vol. 11. Print.
