I believe in love if nothing else. God comes and goes for me; mostly goes. The religion of canyon walls and redwoods generally sustains me, one more part in a whole that strives to dissolve the boundary between parts and wholes. You ask me what love is, and in truth I have no answer. None that can be distilled into words at least, or else I have to retreat so far into metaphor that the end result is same. Should I say, love is what wakes me in the morning? Love is redrock and fern curl and paint on my toes? The mountains rising higher than you thought mountains could climb? Love is the impossibility that renders the rest of this world true? Or should I say that yes, love is desire, it lives in my body, in the plexus ache that yearns for you?



I do not wear my heart, as has been implied, on my sleeve. No: that would be far too protected a place for it, with the whole bulk of my body for a shield. Instead I hold it in my hand, ready for offering to the sun or to silence (or yes, even, to you).



So then, here I am: bloodyfingered, openpalmed, waiting.



What would you have from me? The doveflutter of my pulse is steady, if not always strong. I believe that love is forever. I believe that love is infinite: like basil or zucchini, the more you give away the more you have.



I love often, but not lightly. Doubt it at your peril; they teach us early not to turn our backs on the sea. I've been swept away before (the truth is I can breathe underwater), but I'm trying to stay on the rocks now. Don't think I can't see the fear in your eyes, but baby, the water's fine. It will eat you alive and you will be the better for it. I'm still on the rocks because the current is swift and I know you're only learning how to swim. But the moon is calling, and there is only so much self-control to go around.


Oh, my love is a tidal wave, don't be fooled. It will swallow the world if I let it, every drop of silver sky, every river pebble, every smile. Ah, but you. You have a smile like an altar, and I am ever searching for something to which I can bow my head.


The tide does not conform to our agenda, and it will not be coerced. It has its own logic nonetheless. So do the desert floods and the waterfall song of the canyon wren; so does the slow creak of geologic time, turning a thousand years of shell and bone to marble.


What scale shall we choose? It could all crumble to dust and nothing now, or turn to a solidity the likes of which we've never seen. Perhaps both. We are none alone, nor can be: even an island needs the sea. So come on in, honey. The water's fine.