Loving Another Copernicus

Daylight takes its first breath,

a lace curtain catching the wind
and stretching toward a woman
who stands cool and slender
as fluted glass.

 Sand cushions her feet with ancient softness.

The desert has a kind memory. Tribal women
rubbed their lives into the smoothness
of jars made from the river's clay
and the flesh of men seeking
their salve-polished hands.

 Simple tasks were enough to express love,

bearing water, basting wounds with fingertips
that knew aloe leaves and sweet grasses.

They didn’t need to touch the horizon;

hat task was left for the trees which still
hold credence as pines shadow
the morning and a lady who stands beneath
their fringed aroma. She smells infinity,
inhales the past and wonders why
she can't easily reach her lover.

 He lies asleep, tangled in sheets

of Egyptian cotton, his mind sifting
through the universe, its colander of stars.

Passion sparkles at a distance, mapped

light years from her heart
and her throat bursting into the darkness --

a white iris

enflamed by the blush of dawn.