Before

2.14.13  For C.M.   1969

Complex, it is, love; who it visits, where it remains and why, for how long.

Not something to take credit for, certainly, as we are wont to do, with parenthood, certain it is we who have created such remarkably compliant, successful offspring; then our complete disavowal when things do not go 'well' in a way that ensnares our own sense of comfort and self. And when love finds us at other times, sometimes in youth, its stay can be both a moment, and momentous, nothing more.

So love at times comes for a few hours, with some incessantly turbulent individual who carries you ten blocks, on their back, the others flanking you both front and behind, a darkened unfamiliar city street, cold, rain flecked, this group ultimately reaching a tall aged structure, soot-ed, shadow-bound, til up the ten stories this person is grasping your legs still, pulling you up upon their slim young hips as they reach with youthful sinews to strain and carry you up the floors and floors of dank worn staircases, up to the very very top of the grey ratty building, the others tumbling along also, silent, no idea the origin of this odyssey, lemmings all, following the sense of an unspoken irrevocable pull.

Wordlessly up up to the absolute roof, still on their back you are, their powerful arms, poet hands, wrapped with single-minded possession about your young woman thighs, pulling you quietly, innocently, truly to them, as they stalk over to the side of the tar thickened roof, and lean carefully over a bit, gifting you with the journey and the view, the antithetical embrace, the gift  presented to you in silence, no kiss, no embrace other than your close-knit legs strapped about their back, warm and quiet in the late late night.

You renew your arms' hold with sweet single-minded care about their slim muscular shoulders, their long russet hair tangled in your own curls that stream down your back, the scent of their breath, their pant, their breathlessness now as you both gaze down upon the city in the midst of its frequent restless somnolence.

Yet still you are held, as they are also; immobile, fixed, intransient, as if for all eternity. For when they exhaust, when they finally give way, when they release you, all will be lost, and all will return to that which was before.

Before the potent smiles before shared look before the leap up upon their back before being caught by their quick grasping arms before the interminable walk through city streets before the holding before the enclosure of your tender arms about that fragrant thoughtful neck; all that was engendered and held in the passage soon to be gone, a small boat of twigs and bark, haphazardly tumbling down a billowed stream, soon sodden, the moment of ignition between two selves still within what remains.