Cellphone vibrates me from sleep, from dreams, trembling
on side table, anchored by tautly-stretched cord.  It shakes,
threatening, predicting, portending  
                                                                  a fall

to the floor
before I can hold it
in my hands:                     

                         First thought of the day:  Your photo in the glass—
The one you took against green of grass behind your house, avocado
laced with gold against your torso wrapped in hunter-green.  Caramel
latte of your wrists & neck, lips like dusty, Easter rose
pressing through softest soil. 

                                                     You are everything of the earth, memory
of salt skin on my tongue, stability & solidity
pressed, pressing back, against me, spicy scent
of musk & coconut & summer berries.  I crash
like waves against you, crush the sweet nectar
til it flows.  I, too, am salt, you say, but not of the earth—
of the seas, storms over frantic waves in smoky-blue
eyes sweeping you out where feet no longer touch
                                                                                             the bottom.

Dive deep enough & you, too, are there; shattered shell
& mantle shifting, quaking, sand beneath my flow.  We are
both out of our depths & language collapses into metaphors
that fight definition, spirits groaning in lost languages
of longing.  You’ve lost sight of the coast & I
                                                                                am boiling.

Somewhere, lost in the eddy of intimacy, beyond frustration
or hurt or anger of the past, your past or my past or our
more recent moments of doubt & fear—somewhere before
& after seismic collision of cultures, uncertainty of words
pregnant with misunderstanding, singeing fires that always
smoldered in the hearths of our chests—what we have,
what we’ve found, all we are becomes perpetual
aftershock
of recognition— 

                                   Time & space contract, contracting—birth pains
in the darkness shivering, shuddering, in reverse, eternally
returning to the beginning; when waters under the sky
were gathered & given name; when dry ground appeared,
& everything, everything seen that was seen was called
good.

           We are genetic remembrance.  We are
formed of the land & the sea. We are
all creation & vibration & exhalation
of relief in the passing of pain.   

We are the bruise that love left behind; we are
not the pain itself—but the mark that remains

of rebirth.