He leaves for the bathroom; she orders an extra appetizer that she thinks he’ll enjoy. While they wait, they make conversation. He tells her interesting tidbits from the day, and adds his insights and thoughts. She listens attentively, smiling at him. There are others around them but the couple wouldn’t have been able to recount their conversations later. She offers her own insights. They both laugh at something.

She places her hand tentatively on the table, and he covers it with his own. Their fingers play. He looks at her, his eyes lit with some private joy that she shares. He tells her how glad he is that they are on the same page. She begins to speak about something private, her face becoming both serious and introspective. While she speaks, he pours water into her glass. He continues to monitor the glass and keep it full all night, as attentive as any waiter.

They share appetizers off of tiny plates. When the entrees come, they serve each other. She tears off pieces of her bread and passes it to him and he accepts without comment, allowing her gesture to be assimilated into the deep well of pleasure they are both swimming in. They exchange flirtatious whispers. They laugh about something again. When they have cleared their plates, she packs the remainder of the food on the table into a plastic container while he gets up to pay. When he returns, they dress, thank their host, and leave. You can see her reaching for his hand, and his hand holding hers–a moving ball of warmth in a cold night. You can still just glimpse their faces in the car, her smiling and perhaps laughing about something else again, and him moving his head to back out of the parking space.

Perhaps you wonder idly what they will do tonight, perhaps you wonder how long they’ve known one another. You imagine that a first date–that is, your ideal first date–would look similar. You enjoy the thought of being listened to as carefully as she was listened to, or he was. You smile inwardly at the memory of their eyes as they were locked upon each others’ faces.

But it is no secret that they have been together for years, just two people in love with each other, just two people trying to be good to one another. Truly, it is a cultivated, habitual thing, this thing called respectful, ecstatic love.

Mother was upset by all this noise
She came outside with her cooking knife
Grandmother, you silly goose
Stop scaring all the ladybugs, don’t you know
If they get upset, they’ll bring Fog back to squat on my cabbages

The birds didn’t even look in that direction, they
Were very cheerful that day
Squawking loud enough to ignore
Grandmother scaring the Bejesus out of Fog

Sister didn’t even come ‘round to complain about the ruckus
But then, she’s gentle and she never does
All white as snow, white white as a bride’s dress
Smilingdreaming about him
Although Grandmother huffs whenever he comes around

I wasn’t there to watch, though
The neighbors told me about it later
Seems like I always hear about them but don’t have time to visit
Cuz I’m stuck out in this closed building where the Father is talking
But what he’s saying, I don’t care for, cuz while Jesus and Moses and the others
Only seem to be dealing with a lot of issues
Up in Heaven where I’ve never been,
Grandmother, mother, and sister
Are still living interesting lives.

You are my own flesh and blood, my love
And never again will I need bring to my heart
(pushed by loneliness, misplaced desire)
anyone, anything
not made of my own skin and bone
who does not dream my dreams
and speak my words.

You are
more
precious
oh, my love
You are
the purest, most silent droplet of water
hanging from a smiling leaf
dropping into a smiling pond
whose beauty remains unseen
even by people looking straight at it.

I want to sing sing sing sing until my voice is hoarse and grateful
Water, why do I dream of water? Why cannot I
Quench my thirst?
Perhaps it is because
water
is so close to that milky nectar of life
you gift me.
Perhaps because even water
touches your body only with reverence,
so that I dream of it–awake, asleep–running watery fingertips
–oh, so gently, so facelessly–
over you while you think of mundane things.

Tonight, I drink and drink and drink
I drink sadness and spew madness
And close my eyes and open my mouth to drink again
I’ve drunk all the tea in my mother’s home
I was told to be kind to her, to treat her gently
but you, you have loved me too well
to deeply, oh
and now I cannot love the creature who does not love so
so I drink her tea instead.

A poem should not sound like a poem
lest it give way to the thirst of pompousness.
I thirst still–but I turn my mind more surely to thought
of
ah
you
and my heart is quenched with the waterthoughts of life.

Listen, and you’ll hear the drums, the calling flutes, the strings pulled, the voices throbbing. You throb too, as the slow, heavy beat edges its way into your belly and begins to pull at your spine, so that you know you’ll have to dance or die. The musicians’ faces catch the light of the flames, betraying faces sunk in ecstasy. Who are you to steal into their reveries without joining them?

There, movement. Is it you, giving in? She rises, belly exposed, hands and feet jingling lightly against the rhythms of the night. From her hips flows an iridescent fabric, and through it you can still glimpse the fires. You can glimpse her fires. Her head hovers above her slender neck, eyes closed and mouth parted. Who knows what state she is in? Undulating from her hips comes a dance that she merely channels with her body, with all of herself. It rises from her thighs into her spine, to crack from her shoulders to her trembling arms. She moves as the fire, her feet planted securely as her long curls fall freely down her back. You watch her, feeling electricity crack through you when she raises a bejingled foot to tap the beat out on the packed earth.

Other women have felt the rhythms, slow undulating to the beat from their invisible seats around you. They rise like wisps, falling into place around the first dancer. Their arms weave through the air, their fingers trail lights that flow across your vision. They are entranced and so are you, watching their hips meld to the beat, their heads thrown back, their legs now trembling, now firm.

The mass of bodies and mixed passions flow as one through the clearing; the trees themselves tremble. Harder and slower and louder do the drums pound; harsher and sweeter and dearer do the voices rise, riding upon your tattered awareness. You blink, you’re among them, a cacophony of sensations. You give in. Your arms extend out, your skin shimmers with electricity. The music touches you, and you respond with every emotion your body is capable of: fear, love, wonder, rage, movement and stillness. And all, all in the dance, in the withdrawn faces of the dancers, in the leaves above and in the cool watchfulness of the moon, in the cold watery pinpricks of laughingsmiling stars above. You blink faster and faster, and before you know it, the smothering of sensations turns them into one. Your breath becomes harsher, your blood pounds in your ears, and you forget who you are and remember only the collective identity, the fire light movement violence of speeding emotions, the beat, the women the curls flashing in the light of stars, blood pounding one two one two one two and you give in to it you breathe it in you cry out and you wake up.