“the Love that loves to love the Love that loves to love…” Van Morrison
one
I love Rama the husband of Sita.
If not for Sita I would come in the night with my white hands
to part the green leaves of his breath.
I would kneel by Rama’s bed and whisper
“Let me be Sita tonight.”
If I were Sita
my breasts would be round, white, full of soma.
At the source of my rivers
would be a thatched hut of rough hair
built for Rama at the entrance to a hermit’s cave.
If I were Sita
Rama would come to me from above
from below, from the left side, from the right
and I would never sleep!
two
Jesus puts his arm around my waist and says
“Be wise. Be gentle. Be a man.”
But I say to him
“I am always a woman with my God.
Make me a healer
and I will put my tongue into your wounds to heal them.”
But he doesn’t answer.
He knows that I would fall through the holes
in his hands
that this world can never fill the void in his left side.
He knows that when they lift him off the cedar tree
I won’t be there.
Jesus says
“I have a crown you can’t wear. Where I go
you can’t.”
When I was a boy I wanted his crown
wanted my blood to run down red New Mexican hills
to the roots of bitter trees.
But I couldn’t climb high enough into the tree.
couldn’t get up on the cross by myself!
So the Lord came to help me
came floating in a laughing ball of light to tell me
“This is not for you.
Follow me where blood becomes water
falling into itself forever.”
Now I say to my Jesus
“Let me serve you.
Let me sleep by your kind side in the Garden of Gethsemane.
I will wash your feet with my laughter.”
three
I am in love with Mary, the Virgin of Guadalupe
who flies on a curved black sword of moon
and wears a sky of stars across her shoulder blades.
I come to her at dawn and whisper
“Let me be the first man in America to know you.”
But she knows I love this world as much as I do her.
I would lie down in soil black as an Ethiopian woman
and try to pull the sky down over us!
And I know there is another one before me
whose beauty I can’t touch
who would break open my chest like a prison wall
to let me out
who calls my name in a forest
and makes the coarse hair over my heart stand up
like pine trees on fire!
I want to serve that One.
I say to him
“Let me be your son.
Let my two hands be cymbals and my long throat a trumpet
to praise you with.
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THE FLOOD PLAIN, POEMS BY CHARLIE HOPKINS 