Somewhere Deep

I. Overcoming the edge

Out of nowhere

I clutch the crumbling edge of heart’s desire

In the other hand -

a poem in progress

Each time the precipice gives way

From my grip,

I reach for the solid rock

where I had been standing

Where only moments ago I stood seduced!

In a synaptic show

of receiving and transmitting -

You to me, me to you

Where all at once, I was bathing in a thermal breeze,

Warming numbness with newness,

Drunk on the swirling color

That still rises from somewhere deep

Flurries of carnal exhaust took the shape of nothing

And the color of everything

Up and up from the infinitely gaping canyon of touch and feel

Of lure, want, release

The color was you

The puffs of heat

buzzing through me, turning me back on

Was you to me, me to you

Temptation. Then, the rock breaking away.

I was there and aware as it fell from under me.

I chose

Not to step back onto more solid footing

I leaned

directly into the ravine of throbbing heat

Into the rainbow bending in thin air, me:

a heavy mass extruding from the cliffs of the heart

From enchantment to hanging here

All in one breath?

My activated body now zigzags with the wind,

Here in the vacuum of somewhere deep

The earlier swarm of rainbows now reduced

to a multi-colored tattoo of dust on my skin.

Memories of heat sparkle in the drying sweat -

In the surviving pulse of somewhere deep

Soon I’ll be landing so, I’m using the fall to collect my thoughts:

Retrace mindful steps right up to the precipice

Relive the dive, a victory in letting go,

Of overcoming the edge for the lust of somewhere deep

On the way down I’m taking in all the views.

I’m making a plan, while losing altitude, to climb back up

Onto the edge where the view is breathtaking

And color explodes from the geysers below!

I’ll never give up

I’ll always return

to where the heat of desire is accessible

And the act of love is imaginable if not tangible

In the depths of La Garfagnana