PRIMAL

I know how love should grow
from common interests
and trust, a series of kindnesses
layered on day by day
Something gentle that starts
as friendship, becomes something more.

And then the thought of you is physical,
rushing through, a flash flood. Or
you enter a room and my cells explode.

It is not about the kindnesses
or the formidable intellect or
the spiritual connection or some
other explainable thing. Old
and deep growing from a primal place,
older than DNA or cells,
from the mind of God.

Not even the way the word love appears
suddenly without warning just behind
your name, or how you wander through
my sleep, can explain how,
as I pass through a doorway behind you
and you pause so that I’ll move into you,
hands around from behind, feather
fingertips across your chest, breasts
pressed against your back, how your arousal
seeps into me, completes me,
how when I press my lips against your neck
I taste the full moon and evergreen, the
wild musk of the gray wolf.

© Joan Barton, 2001

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