For the 50

I have not the memory of your sunbeam smile as it caressed
and enveloped
the western horizon, casting fires of red and orange over
the humpbacked
arc of the waves. I have only heard the stories of your
current-changing love
or how the winds of your voice blow cool refreshment to
the weary soldiers,
reviving them, relieving their suffering and stanching
their mortal wounds.

But I have traced the curvature of your ribs in starlight,
and followed the line
of your abdomen to the little cave of your belly. I have seen
your firefly eyes in
the wild darkness and at the first paint-strokes of the dawn;
I have been to the
warm and radiant center of your self, liquid in all its perfect
alchemy, and I have
taken refuge in the raven-dark tangle of your mane. Consuming
fire, you have

crested the impossibility of myth and set down at the foot of
my ever-malleable
reality. O dearest love, you are both human and inhuman in these
frail eyes. My
goddess of the flesh, my tamer of titans, it is your naked truth
that comes shining
as a sword, it is the sweet scent of your mouth that leads me
into war.