A Hill Covered In Broom
Broom covered hill-
I met him in a muggy room of
funk sounds- the screaming of O’ Jay’s and young people inhaling
funk smells- of sex, repressed dreams, and Marlboro Light.
He was not occupying the space like other thrashing bodies,
rather sitting right above it.
I never knew someone so familiar
like your Grandmother’s faded plastic Disney cups
could be so removed, as if the floor was
yielding at each corner around his base, but he
was unmoved, standing…thinking.
He devours music. loves the notes,
the way I do the words, so we wooed one another with
our capacity for storage on a 7 hour road stretch.
I never understood how someone with an ear that
could hear how it all should go, needed no one to know.
The morning quietly leaking through blinds,
the gentle giant pulling my fragility into his concaved form
and sniffing tufts of baby hair on my neck with
his own brand of intimacy that he pours out
in gallons like sunflower oil.
Eyes: crystal orbs of light blue
sitting beneath two perfectly imperfect brows
Here the depth of the sea in cobalt flecks meets
the quiet sovereignty of a January morning snow.
A boy-child’s inexperience and a sage’s wisdom rests here.
Often I find him sitting above life,
surveying it’s goodness and wild injustice
“I’d rather be kind than smart” says the humble ace
who holds my fist from bringing down the gavel.
The suppleness of his grace casts shadows on my soul.
And he is the eternally open door
that I read about as a child in the gospels,
and a phoenix sopping in wanderlust,
rising again to meet the morning with a burning
hope and a gentle trust in the goodness of existence.
He looks at me. I am being seen for the first time
in the fullness of my unsheathed grandeur and vulgarity.
I feel no shame because he was laughing as I
put on mother’s bra and rewound the sex scene of Dirty Dancing
and crying as I hid my tears from other girls in the high school bathroom.
I was 5. He was there,
I was 16 and he was there…somehow.
He smells like soap and home,
and the hill covered in broom is content
to stand in its golden beauty and humanity.