Time's Parabola

You write in language I will never know,
Cyrillics like Mayan hieroglyphs, stone-chiseled.
I dream your soft eyes by the Black Sea’s shore,
barefoot nakedness, your steady, bright flame,
love of life lighting your Odessa eyes . . .
Words will never embody your beauty.

I can’t hear what I see in the wide world
of your heart, feel your body’s tattoos carved
in star shine, parabolas of the earth
turning over, under, above, beside
the night’s shiver of love, the offering
flesh makes to the mystery of old souls.

Who was ever worthy of your Russia?
Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg;
Tolstoy’s Moscow; Chekhov’s fate
to squeeze out drop by drop his father’s blood,
the serf’s son akin to my indentured father’s
father whose murder left him no share of the crop . . .

as no life is literature, we know
lovers’ hearts in tandem don’t skip a beat,
are little cushions of time where we sleep
and wake and dance through the night’s miracle.
I thought words unworthy of your beauty,
all this space between years disappearing.

                                                                for Katerina Abalakina,　
                                                                living rather than dwelling
                                                                at the end of Sky’s corridor

(6-9, 10, 12 April 2012)

copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander