Happy Birthday

My heart remembers the first time
our eyes found one another.
I was five and you were nine
and we chased one another
along the banks of the Tigris river
while our mothers carried water
in red clay urns.

It remembers the second time as well,
the panic in your face as you
pulled me clear of a Centurion's horse
driven rabid with disease.
Your breath smelled like oranges,
bitter and sweet as you stroked my hair
and dabbed tears from my cheeks.

The third time our paths crossed
I was rescuing you from a cage.
I struck the life from two men
at the cost of my arm.
You bound my wound and sang to me
for three days until the
fever blew the flame from my candle.
My ghost watched you grieve
by my graveside.

Centuries slid by in a cacophony
that kept our spirits from touching.
I painted blue men and fractured images
as I clawed the black ether between days,
unsure as to what it was
I knew I lacked.
And you bore the weight of small minds
and brutal hands, but somehow
kept your heart from harm.

France was beautiful at our fourth meeting
and the bucolic serenity of
the pastoral swath upon which we
built our first home was green and so alive.
Our children plied secrets from the forest
and learned to love the Earth
as seasons turned food into coin into life.
We passed into the grey liminalis
together,
desiccated by cholera and surrounded by
our seventeen grandchildren.

We gouged freedom from bigotry
as we spent our fifth age together,
moving slaves through the Railroad
and rejoicing at the quizzical expressions
that darkened the faces of soldiers
and plantation owners alike.
Alabama was exceedingly hot that year,
and the mosquitoes were terrible,
but there was solace in your arms
and wholeness in your heart.

A sixth time, we glanced off one another,
you bound to my best friend,
I watching silently as you married,
bore him three beautiful girls,
turned grey and ancient
within the circle of his love.
And I was happy to have been near you,
though it broke every bond
my heart tried to forge.

Is this the seventh? Has it been so long?
Have I once again found the woman
who taught my heart to sing
when it only dared mutter?
who taught my heart to dance
where it only ever stumbled?
who taught my heart to soar
whence it would have only drifted?

Two wavelengths in collision,
a perfect harmonic resonance,
a pair of souls carried across
all the generations of Man;
intersecting, cleaving, departing
and intersecting again.

I loved you on the delta
I loved you in the agora
I loved you at my bedside
I loved you in your absence
I loved you at our hearth
I loved you as we struggled
I loved you from a distance
and I love you now,
in my arms,
in my life,
in my heart.