Temple of Love

Venus, star in the night. Love in the darkness. Your breath. Ecstasies of the body, erotic touch. This temple, its sacred creativities.

O, the goddess of love awaits, inviting. Sighing, and moans. The gleam of the god of war, his helmet golden red in the night.

When Anteros - god of requited love, "love returned," and the avenger of scorned love - came, wings beating like heartbeats, you knew me. For the first time. Anteros, brother of Eros, god of lust, love, erotic union.

Fire gleams in your eyes, volcanic. You didn't see me before though you had known me a long time. I was hidden in your life.

I'm tired of restrictions. Let's change what we have meant to each other. Like angels lying in a bouffant of chocolate and roses. The convergences on the public holy day of love, Valentine's.

Great art presents itself as presence in the world, alive, shimmering.

What the heart holds, for it prefers secrecy.

birth of beauty

times of decrease, recession, turmoil, depression, upheaval, war, loss and degradation, fear and grief, the unpardonable, what can't be retracted, the birth of love borne by beauty on the waves of the sea

Savonarola's body burnt in the Piazza della Signoria, it is 1498, he who convinced you to renounce the sensual pleasure of beauty - The Mystical Nativity painted in 1500 so different to when

you and Leonardo da Vinci, a friend who you studied with in Verrocchio's workshop in the 1470s

those angelic visions

art historians speak of spiritual tautness in your work, of the grace of line and that your figures are holy heiroglyphics

she appeared under your delicate sable brushes in 1492 and disappeared for centuries until the Pre-Raphaelites resurrected her and now she is a definer of feminine beauty in the modern world

with my curls, when I was a young woman, people used to compare me to 'Botticell's Venus'; I, too, have borne her...

rising from the sea

the rush of waves in my ears

listening to you


beauty, fragile, on the lip of, edges, knowing loss's inevitability, a flower blossoms, fragrant perfume and soft vivid colour of petal drifting away, it can't remain, you knew, Sandro, and

yet, she is, borne by the Zephyr on the scallop-shell and wrapped in veils of flowers by the Horae

washes of colour, seaspray of roses,

translucent robes

poetry we weave ourselves with

Divine Message of Beauty in the World

I write on vellum with sea-scalloped edges.

Birth blueness is everywhere, that particular nascent colour.

You bring the simplicity of writing with you.

While I wear a cloak of flowers, a shower of roses, lyrical, fragile birth, beauty, this flowing cape of words

That the goddesses of the seasons have woven for us.

___________
Botticelli's Birth of Venus hangs in the Uffizi, in Florence. It was painted in 1485.

Oceanic

If I knew how. The swirl-over. In the bank's marble concourse, the ocean wraps you in its currents. We are never far from sea-salt, the briny wind, even inland.

The gentle breezes, long before Sandro, before she came gliding on the fan-shaped scallop sea-shell under his paintbrush.

Before we clothed her with poetry.

The birth of love in the world.

Veils to clothe Boticelli's Venus with

A poem arises catching the energy, imparting meaning, hestitatingly, faltering for words, images, rhythms.

My love for you.

Slowly through endless revisions,
shaping this love.

Disparate layers emerge, an undercurrent infiltered with strands, approaches, understandings, memories, hopes, desires, the way the sensual mind composes.

We create ourselves through each other. It's more complete,
who I am with you.

Not a version of reality but a veil of being,
the poem of love that is
a transparent garment we clothe ourselves with,
our metaphors and concepts of a world

which resists
our gaze.

Writing is a deeply
meditative act.

A language of love.

A listening.

Drumbeat

The palm drops
on the inside
of the skin
animal drumming
beating on the drum
drumbeating the night
beating on the eardrum
drum drumming deeply
drawing the heartbeat drumbeat.

My body is the drumbeat
drumbeating my skin
sweating, hot,
drumbeating my body's
percussion, rub, snare,
pounding, colliding of
musical pulses
lyrical sinewy
or staccato modern
or wild shamanic
hair flying
free.

Red shiny satin clinging,
wet
sweat.

The djembe hip bag that I scrubbed, suede dyed to emulate Holstein cow naugahyde, in black and cream, with a wild boar bristle brush and saddle soap because of the dark streaks, smells of animal hide.

I hold it to my nose, and smell. Animal. Hide.
The drumming of the jungle.
An animal skin.

Taut.

Primal beat bounding
resonating, resounding.

You gaze at me, though you haven't looked at me.

I am in your gaze without your seeing me.

It is my hunger you remember feeding,
that you want to feed.
Our heat burns hotly.

Drumbeating
the rhythms beating in us,
the African djembes
dance us.

__________________________
Lately I've been dancing to fabulous drumming. I'd like to thank the drummers at Toronto Tam Tam at Xing Dance Theatre, Shara Claire at 5Rhythms™, Gary Diggins, and Kwanza Msingwana at Tribal at Dovercourt House in Toronto, all in the last 3 weeks.

As a lyrical poet, I use the I-Thou relationship often in my writing. The "you" is a muse and doesn't refer to anyone in particular...

The Walker...

I passed her in the alley on the way home, large, in clogs without any socks, grey hair dyed blonde, the rain turning to snow with a wind rising, cold, gingerly braving the asphalt, hanging onto her walker, out, exercising, steps barely felt by numb feet and legs but each touch of the ground and forward motion an accomplishment. We crossed the road. Opening my door, the dog ran out and greeted her, which lit her face up. But where the pavement curved to meet the drain she fell. Sideways, on her hip. After assuring us she was fine, a neighbour and I lifted her to her feet. The ambulance was already flashing behind us. "I'm fine, I'm fine, thank you." I placed her purse on her walker and she began her slow step forward. Her hands couldn't grip the walker, it was uneven, the ground, and she fell again. The snow falling on bare skin, I pulled her top down, a small dignity, as the paramedics came and spoke to her and then lifted her and gently took her into the ambulance... perhaps diabetes, I didn't ask, only blessed her and wished her well and waved good-bye, and then came and wrote this, a sketch to remember her by.