A Golden Shovel poem, after Gwendolyn Brooks’ To Be in Love Love, you are of the body, yet beyond form. You are expressed through skin, through tongue, through honey and salt. You are the breath that startles the trees, brightens the birds, bows the grass in supplication. What living thing craves like this? Does the green plant yearn? The beautiful silver birch ache? Does the flower crave the bee? Is the swallow shattered by desire? My missing half— you are meat and candlewax. You are wine and melody. You are sunset and daggers. Of women, I am a many faceted Madonna. I could love you with wet irises, with hot oceans, with the blue weeping bells of wisteria. For you, I am a perspiring plum. Won’t you consume me with teeth and tongue? I am made of skin, of bone, pine needles, hair, of dust. Just give me one golden day when I can touch you. When river bursts forth from rock, when the gates of reason part their iron lips, when the moon puts to rest its icy hurt.
