A Hill Covered In Broom

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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.