love can do many things. it can
smooth out the mountain's wrinkles
and make you hear water flowing
in your heart, give you a vision
of a woman far away in the dazzling sun,

or make you hear a fragmented tune
filling the flat distance swaying in the wind
while morning sunbeams splash up drops
of light from the edge of eternity.
suddenly you might find a memory
from a seventeenth century hero
tumbling in the thunderclouds
building up over the plowed fields.

love can make you wake
in a pool of hot sweat
with tears that secretly fall
at midnight when you face the tree shadows
swaying outside the window
it can make a prisoner of conscience
hold tight to the determination to be indifferent
until a voice says, "my heart
must become vaster than this, otherwise
what can i rely on as i journey?"

there is nothing else,
just the prosody of love
and tears kicking leaves along the road
as it walks against the wind..
i knew you once, before we came here
we met in an empyrean no longer charted
in memory's latitude and longitudes
then lost each other in thunder
and birth and the stream of time..

i am younger now than i was
when we parted in a previous life
but you must recognize me
floating down your way at the union
of mountains and rivers where floating clouds
are flying gowns, spring water glides into a ravine
the sun shines through chilled light
and once again, whether we want to or not,

we meet and love each other