Across ages and spaces
Where cultures of mutual love
Can take root
The same longing is present
When being far from loved ones;
And the same comfort felt
Of meeting them again.
"Come, rest your head on my lap"
Could have come from a father
Working the Fertile Nile
In the age of Empire
Or from an Inuit in far raw-wind lands
Of North or even, who knows,
Future slave-camps of Mars.
Without the Spirit, nothing
In this cold Universe makes sense to me
(Or is worth making sense of)
Love is love, rainbow warriors exclaim
But what is the love we paint on our flags
And pin on chest of beating heart?
Is it something, an illusion we make up
To suit our desires, or to make bearable
Our brief flutters of absurd life
In the utter emptiness of space
That surrounds matter,
Itself an illusion of forces?
Or is love truly something
-- Someone -- who makes
Life worth living
Who we can never possess,
The best we can hope for
Being that Love possesses us
So that from time to time
We have faith and strength
To carry on despite
The ever present cold breath
Of death and nothingness
On our foreheads?
Such thoughts whirr
In my congested head
In an Orlando motel
Far from the culture and people
I know.