INTIMACY

  
I have a practice with my lover called Where were we? We lie in bed in the dark and go over the sequence of the day we've had together. She says some; I pick it up; memory show-offs; the antiphony of moments and how it felt inside them, the tinier the better.

-- Coleman Barks

                 
                                    Don and Robert on the beach in Sitges

Spring is how the soul renews and refreshes
itself, fields damp and sprouting. Roses

glowing, birds learning to talk. Morning
wind animating everything: cypress to iris,

Tell me dear . . . Iris to tulip, Show me how
you're faithful. Plane trees play their

tambourines. Pine trees clap hands. Doves
do their one-note question, coo-where, which

means, Be here with us. A pink rose stands
straight. Violets kneel. Grape leaves do

full prostration. A new kind of poetry is
coming. Glory makes promises again to

Mutabilis. Thunder says, Wash your face in
this, and your hands and feet. Narcissus

blinks and comes near the nightingale to say,
We need a new song. Reply: This is for

love's emptiness. Now the green ones dress
like Khidr. It is time to hear the secrets

the dervishes know. No, agrees the Penelope
and jasmine, Silence is the best alchemy.

-- Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks