Starfish of Love

Yesterday, I read the Mary Oliver poem that Nina Bagley posted on her blog.

It sparked something.

It evoked one of those episodes
in which the words pour out,
making me feel as if my job is merely to convert
the energy sizzling in my brain into word forms
and then to edit carefully, lightly, with intention
all while preserving the power and authenticity
of the energetic signature that's both me and foreign.

Yes, that's it. I felt as if I were translating.

So I wrote and edited and the poem below came into being.
Then I searched for the perfect image
to convey the freight of the words,
because blog readers love the pairing of words and images,
but alas, no starfish could be found.
This little gem had to substitute. A nautilus, I think.
I'm "still looking for starfish of love."

"Still Looking for Starfish of Love" - photo copyright 2009 Meri Arnett-Kremian

Looking for Starfish of Love*

My heart leans forward, into the gale
of longing, its sails snapping, straining
against the fullness of its load. Fierce gusts
propel me swiftly over waters of time toward a harbor
on the down slope of life's rim, a shadowy place where
old fears whisper that destiny waits, jaws open, to devour me.

Somewhere deep within I know a white-hot bolt
of change is coming, a jagged current of energy
too strong to resist. Positive, negative, bonded
inevitably in the same charge, entwined like lovers.
Beyond the horizon, just beyond the curve of imagination
there's a fresh wind pulling a tempering veil across the past.

In the howling time, down beyond the pit of death,
love bred its own extinction, its leftover traces morphing
into primal, unspeakable grief. In the absence of words,
a symbol-war was fought there, in that barren land where
every space on earth was foreign to me. That was then, and
then is gone, leaving but a faint wake to mark its path.

In that ravaging time, my heart was skewered with cruelest
intent. It still bears thin scars that map the site of hope's demise,
causing me to dread the assassin of love. I fear he still walks
about seeking those he may devour. Yet one step at a time,
I carefully traverse the narrow isthmus of existence,
looking for starfish of love to shelter beneath my wet skirts.

Now a still point of expanding time has rung the bells,
a buoy clang, with seals slithering below and sea fogs dancing
above the thin blue line where longing surrenders to the living
once more, that thin blue line marking the place where hearts
trace small ellipses in the air as if with nimble fingers and
strain to follow purple distances to their passion places.

Over the edge of the known, I somersault dizzily
in a hurricane of thoughts until I stand on wobbly legs,
disoriented, brain rattled, understanding beyond the edge
of recognition that a safe harbor of mystery beckons me,
knowing with dazzling certainty there is a way to transplant
my life-worn face on the young body of love.

* edited again Wednesday morning -
I just can't help tinkering.