(A Song to Me)
Write your love inside your eyelids, cast verses on
Sweet violets.
I have drawn for you a map
Of story and of song.
Point your feet toward the sea, take it with you when you’ve gone.
Each hand will carve the other.
For this is all there is to know of love;
Two beings carving one another.
Presented as a present, all wrapped and tucked and clean,
Tied with dandelion string,
Clothed in cream-colored linen, walking near the ocean,
The taste of a faraway notion, this
Is all there is to know of love.
A room of books, a room of birds,
A line to hang your dresses and your sheets,
Brass bowls of tangerines,
Willow-bark dreams.
Inside, even the snow is sweet.
This is all there is to know of love.
Sad selves sold soft to willing souls, we are
Only a little drunk, not like last time,
Or the time before.
We are milk and we are honey, we are coffee in the morning,
Our soil is rich and never rocky,
The sky is clear and often sunny,
Good rains fall each year, and the weather changes slow
So our gardens always grow.
We eat tomatoes from the vines,
Read our fortunes in the lines
On palms that have been calloused by our years
Of digging through the dirt in our past loves’ chests, darling, someday you will rest.
Each love will be a map for the you that is to come,
Each loss will be a song.
This is all there is to know of love.
You will walk a thousand sunshines, let your hair grow long, until
Someday,
Hands stained red with beets, you’ll be laughing in a kitchen with your lover,
You will sleep in tangled sheets.
You’ll have smile lines, clear eyes, and freckles on your arms.
Someday, a wraparound porch,
A trickling stream,
The sound of little feet.
Smiling, always smiling, you are everything that beats.
You are everything that sings.
This is all there is to know of love.