However beautiful,
No pebble on the beach.

You were my touchstone.

And yes,
I have now smelt the perfume of the Gods.

If only for precious moments
Opened the gilded door
And walked through.

Set foot on hallowed ground,
Taken refuge where my soul longed to be,
In the sunlit meadow of my dreams.

Bathed in love and light,
Healed and nourished,
Elevated by experiences of wonder.

It was the miracle of how the needs,
The spiritual hunger
Of two separate physical beings,
Two fractured souls,
Could fit together so perfectly,
Like long lost pieces of some ancient code
That, once re-united, yielded up energies,
Ecstasies and insights beyond our imagining.

That was the key.

And far beyond any love affair
With its own predictable half-life
Of intensity, its cycle of emotion.

Instead a permanent path
That, once illuminated,
Goes ever onward - a way home…

When in love or inspired,
An eternal kiss from the divine
Awaits us all.

And, just as the frostiest of old maids
Secretly longs to tremble
With excitement in her bed,
One more time.

Or the pained young lover
Pitifully nurses a wound
That renders their heart homeless,
Mourning the loss of romance
Seemingly gone forever.

The truth is
Nothing that truly matters
Can ever evaporate,
Be excised,
Burnt out of your soul.

However ready we may or may not be,
And at any stage in our life,
There will always be the chance
To reclaim our essence,
The shape we call our own.

For, once spun,
The silken thread of all our aspirations
Remains intact,
It can never be broken.
And, with courage, even a trail of tears
Will always lead us back
To where our fractured heart longs to be.

So that, just as the wise old Shoguns
Chose to,
With their most precious of porcelain vessels,
We too can repair our cracks with gold
And glow again.
Crazed by life,
More beautiful than ever before.

Each of us orphans
On this dizzy sphere,
Initially cast adrift
Without a mooring point.

Even as infants,
We hunt intuitively
On the surface
Of the kind natural world,
That immediately enfolds us,
For divine connection
And it offers us just that,
Even if only fleetingly.

Weak as we are,
It's not always possible
To hold station for long enough
To heal as we should.
But look how,
With our hungers
And our needs stretched
On the steely breeze of existence,
We do so love to feel
The warmth of safe harbour
Whenever we find it.

Here we can nuzzle,
Nestle for a while,
And feel safe enough
To open ourselves up,
As we need to,
In search of the key
To trials and experiences
That will make us whole again.

Summoning the compassion
To share the pain of others,
Or fearlessly becoming
The fiercest of lovers perhaps?

And how I long
For that abandonment again
More than anything else,
And the opportunity it offers,
With our gift of self,
To rouse something eternal
In the ascendant,
Impervious to all peril or decay.

A luminous shape
To forever call your own.

We are anything but finite
Or alone!
After all the petals of proof
Are here in our hearts,
Are they not?

And however lengthily
Deflated or tortured
By our own frail selves,
Or even at the hands or others,
Inviolate, intractable,
At the core of our being,
The very prism
Of sanctity and self remains.

And latent there forever
The quick silvered opportunity
Of redemption,
To become enchanted again.

Sublime moments refracted,
Even if only for seconds,
Caught forever in your soul.

Despite what we imagine
In our sometime pain,
Beset either by aching anticipation
Or subsequent loss,
Lovers are never found by chance.

So tell that to the trees,
Who've seen it all
Countless times before
And can only stand apart
In the meadow of life
And wait
For us to dream again,
Like some broken hearted waif
On a grimy street,
For whom only the predatory
Are likely to stop.

For not even fool's comfort
Can cling on there
To inhibit notes of caution
That would otherwise trim our wings,
Spoil any such dividend.

And so much more too!

Seems like
We always had this coming.
Our needs, till met,
Like rising sap,
Like clotted pollen in the air.

As it always is
In beauty's sweet surrender,
Desire is the irreplaceable *****
That draws us steadily on to one another
And then fruits.

You were in me all along.