Waiting (for all who do not wait in vain)

I wait for you
Like the desert waits for the sea
Like the pen waits for its ink
Like the flower waits for its nectar
Like the bird waits for its nest
Like the tortoise waits for its shell
Like the child waits for her milk
Like the egg waits for the yolk
Like the thunder waits for its clap
Like the nail waits for the hammer
Like the voice waits for its song…

I wait
Like a breathless, anxious exile,
Lost in unfamiliar presences	
Pummelled by strange silences
Wetting my pillow with tears of my blood.

I know you know how I feel
And feel what I feel
And see why I must feel the way I feel
And why I must wait for you
And why, because you’re not here, 
I must feel the fever of a maniac 
Longing for a touch again 
That, like the pebble in the ocean
trapped in the prison of the unknown,
will renew my strength and remake my face
and spring me anew like a fresh proud foliage
breaking out of the wasted branches of a dying tree.

For this I must tell you:
My love for you is the true love of a man for his lover
The untainted love of a woman for her man;
The blood of unwriteable poetry,
Of fire stoked in the hearth of remembrance,
Of blood knots sealed at the shores of distant rivers
Of umbilical cords joined by the past and present
Unfeeling Time will never sever.

Our love is two rivers in the confluence of shared memory,
Dusky rivers that will not now flow backwards,
Rivers that are the mermaid’s songs
Pulling together the hair of friendship,
Diminishing the shadows,
Mending the distances,
Echoing the birth cries,
Like the sound of long cannons.