like Jericho of the ancients
my walls have found their matchmate, their shofar,
their holy crumbling disintegration -
have sounded the depth
of my abyssal and penetrable, vaginal soul

I am entered through the desolated and tender crevasse
discovered in the arched vault of my love
which treasures not, nor needs
yet knows ee cummings’ “secret of begin” to the outer
borders of my being, the hidden places of my knowing

the right kind of madness, this
of a rightness and a madness so pure, it stings
the perceptions of ordinariness and
makes of ennui - the sinter of a heated being -
anything but

yet, enter my fornix with dread and awe
lest you vitrify it by atomic waves of sorrow
I am fragile, and tender, gentle, strong and destructive
I am death from Life
and
Life from Death

blow your shofar, Ram, and I shall fall into your gravity
I shall be as Callisto to Jupiter,
an orbit by seduction and a
child wombed in Love


c. 2017 Roberta Compton Rainwater

a fiery lava pool is my heart
a lake of incandescence    bubbling
over my body    melting me to raw emotion
burying me in an *******    pyroclastic flow of feelings

Love has taken on meaning
has produced Life
messy     viscous    muddy    hot
writhing
Life
has given new depth to my volcanic soul
and driven temperatures
to icy    bottomless    chasms

under which is my fire    my heart’s hearth

a legion of ghosts crawls over my rim
an infantry of past experiences to
remind my heart
of a once-fought war on the field of my soul
on the Plains of Love
in the chapel of my body

my heart pours its lavic gift over
my rim
leaving nothing of them to recall
or bring forward
or sound retreat
for
they are not memories anymore
they are echoes of echoes of echoes    disappeared
neither inchoate nor fully realized
gone


c. 2017 Roberta Compton Rainwater

are we, yet we use our two eyes like canes
tap-tap-tapping the ground of our being
to see by echo-location
what our blind god does not:
differences

for, the non-seeing, ever-feeling, all-surrounding

One
With
Love

has no eyes for anything but
what we are:
sameness
and filters nought, nor
turns away,
nor stumbles about looking for
nothing real
to worship

for, the all-seeing is Love and
the all-feeling is Love and
the all-encompassing is Love and

blind to all else


c. 2017 Roberta Compton Rainwater

we have earned our ways out of this
marriage
the siren song of our love echoes in hollows,
disappears
awakens nothing anymore, except
companionship
shall we enter the echoes as they disappear,
look
for a hand held in softness, a hand held
fondly
a kiss gentled by years    and
tears?    or
shall we stay as we are: prope and still,
awaiting

the Beginning


c. 2017 Roberta Compton Rainwater

you are the illuminated
manuscript
I, the reader
   the lover
   of you

show me your illuminations
your singing arabesques
   the music
   of you

chant your canticle
hidden in the golden calligraphy
   wrapped
   within you

open your pages
to me -- for
I am the reader
   the lover
   of you


c. 2017 Roberta Compton Rainwater

I saw my heart dancing
in the park wood today
She was dark
and lithe
and graceful
She is dark because I am
discovering Her still
and am not completed yet

It's an archeology of the heart
I practice
The inner eye caught
the nuanced landscape
which foretold the fossil
With careful strokes
respectful of the treasures
within me,
I clear away
I clear away
My trowels: feelings
my brushes: tears and laughter

As they are cut away
from ego sediment and stone,
my fossil pieces
fit in place
and lock together the puzzle
that I was
that I was
It is a re-membering I do
because
because
I saw my heart dance
in the park wood today



c. 2009/2017 Roberta Compton Rainwater