FIRST LOVE

“A first love always occupies a special place.” - Lee Konitz

Poets and Storytellers United has prompted us this week to give a piece related to the “firsts” or “lasts”. Here is my offering.

The Fall

How can I describe how I felt

When first I was with you?

Think of a desert traveller’s

First thirsty gulps of water

At the well of the oasis.

Think of the first spring flower

After a long hard winter;

The bright, gold, glorious morning

That follows a storm raging all night long;

The island green and gold

In an exhausted castaway’s eyes

Amid the endless sea.

Think of the way a seedling feels

When first it breaks through

The cold, dark earth.

Think of the tears the deaf man shed

When first he heard a song

With new-found hearing

And the heart that snapped with joy

When the blind man

Saw the rainbow for the first time.

This was how I felt

When first I was with you

And all this was my trembling flesh

Trying to tell you

When your cool fingers

You first extended in a light caress.

Ah! Then the birds sang to the wind

And the sun teased the waves,

As the froth amused itself

On the shifting sand.

The rosy collared seashell’s lips

Curled upward, inward

In ever diminishing microcosms

Becoming filled with more and more detail.

We spun on sand,

While seahorse galloped in the depths

And sea and sky vied to be more than blue:

Azure, ultramarine

Deep peacock smalt, cerulean,

Aquamarine, blue-green and verdigris.

The sun, he whipped us with his lash relentlessly

Each blow resounding as if on cymbal struck,

And on we spun, floated ever on,

Expanded filled our universe

Merged with the infinite

All in a seashell on a sandy shore.

And then,

I fell.

Forever seemingly,

In black abyss,

Accurséd Tartarus.

And then I fell,

And then I woke,

Clutching your fleeting shadow

In a sweat-drenched sheet.