For Shame

I watched an old friend I’d never met
curl away in smoke as a full moon rose
and waterlight played across my closed eyes.

Do you know this feeling, lover?

Have you felt it tear you apart,
the yearning for what is,
the burning need to share it,
the shame that comes with words?

A dancing shame, a shaman’s shame,
a moonlit shining ecstasy of shame
that words can only point at.

Never quite the same, this shame,
seeking the syntax of simple breath,
saved by a howling birthcry
borne across the deep,
that long-buried beginning word
begging to be loved, to be shamed,
to be shared, to be sung,
to be held onto in the silence of it all.

TRACE

Hineni (הנני)

The Golden Eternity