the wind in your brow,
to send you ‘cross the waves
of your long-past stars.
i think i’ll not take that
kiss now, but rather run
back through the fields
of my youth,
to send on its way
this masked present,
this place in a
dank corner.
i seem to recall that
holding hands for the
first time was the best
innocent arousal;
that sensing something
in the smile, seeing something
in the web of the fingers, was
the finest mark of new destiny.
now is the time, i believe,
to raise the child in me
back up, to breathe the heavens
of its collective cosmos
that i once found
in first love, whatever
that was when the
earth had a better tilt.
it is that she is still
there, really, having
never left the place where
i first felt the crashing calm
that comes with a singular
moment seared into the
skin of one’s heart and brings
tears to a boil when it’s lost.
that was life’s first lesson
about love, if one is defining
love in the way of compounding,
crazed, green vibrations.
it was love of the kind
that put little kinks in
my walk when i knew she
would be where i was headed;
or salted my tongue dry
when i wanted to say a clever
thing and had it all fall out
onto the ground like sawdust;
or made her enter my dreams in which
she replaced Jodie Foster as the lead
in that whatever-movie-Jodie-Foster-was-in
that made me fall for her in the first place.
we only held hands, my first
lover and me. my first skin-
to-skin with the ethereal,
my first tumble into wonderland.
i thought i wanted to kiss her
because i saw kissing
on the television and believed
that was the right gate into something.
that two people collided in some
violent, inviolate way which caused
the chemicals of reaction to induce their
new collective atoms into a sort of dance.
but i am more endeared to us
having not kissed, having instead
enfolded fingers clumsily, for the
fact that it seems to have allowed
me to dream with a clearer view
of what was something not
meant to be anything but a glimpse
into the heart of my later self as a star,
rather than the fading light that
flares off, to die away having first
burned, then waned, then cooled,
then disappeared altogether.
it was as if we knew what touch
meant, in some primal way; how
it transcended the mossy stump
upon which we found ourselves sitting
and elevated us onto the same plane
of existence as the heroic ancients and the
departed souls of ancestors whose
passions seemed as pure as first thought.
we were bad at it that first time,
even though we negotiated the
moment beforehand by one saying
to the other that it would be ok
and the other agreeing with a nod
and a blush. and when the moment
came, it had to be alone (something we
both ached to have happen spontaneously),
and it had to be quick (something
that neither said but both felt) because
holding hands for the first time could
not just go on forever, lest it
become too awkward, the way holding onto the
pronunciation of a simple word so long that
it stops having a meaning and becomes
silly when you utter it to yourself, like “puddle.”
so one of us let go first, each hand
vibrating from it after, and we did not look
at each other but i know it made her
dance home like it did for me.
what regard, then, do i give
my plight in winter days when
i long for this tenderness from
youth? not to go back for sure
but maybe to just let myself
dream-recall, if only for a moment
before i get back to it,
before I return to here.
doing so affords me the chance
to not let it be spoiled by too
much sun and air, and therefore
remain fresh and eternally vivified.
i think i’ll not take that
kiss now, but rather run
back through the fields
of my youth,
because it’s better
knowing what it did
to my later knowing, what
it did for my later heart,
to have let love lead
me to this place of certain-always,
than to have led love
toward a stale perhaps-never.
