Closer and Dearer

They clung hard and fast and strong to each other like oceans

Clinging to the earth and though currents did pull at them,

They held each other closer and dearer than all other things

And neither moon nor storms nor wind could pull them apart,

For so great was their love and deep was their course

That each day and in each place they married each other anew,

For their love was ocean wild storms and earth solid stones;

Their love was deep plunging roots and up-thrusting swells;

Their love was sunrise and sunset and the planet’s ancient turning.

It was bright and hot as red fire and soft as gentle rain.

They belonged to each other like hands in the darkness, like warmth in the light

And they lived hard, pushed strong and deep, holding nothing back, brooking no regress,

For their lives were each other’s and their bodies were but deeds

Of that belonging, titles of that same debt which they paid one another

With joy and with vigor, with deep gladness, utterly without regrets.

Buried deep in each other they had found this secret, this treasure, this love

Made of diamond and jet, this love flooding sapphire and scarlet sand,

This quiet, soft love, steadfast and silent, yet earth trembling strong,

Sonorous and resonant, flowing pure. This was the deepness they craved in each other;

This was their song in the dark, their touch in the night, their emptiness filled so full,

Overwhelming the black hollow of every last lostness of every last night.

This was the secret they kept and pressed between them like fire

And fed with their bodies and hearts; this was their hunger and their life,

For their bodies were written fire and their hearts were blood and light.

And so into that ground they gripped and held soft and strong and bright.

Into that night they sung, a song of fury, a song of passion and delight

And planted such seeds and dreamed such dreams and walked beneath stars

And breathed each other’s life, for there was no dread and no darkness,

No storms of fire or of ice that could stop them loving deeply or staunch their flowing life.

Eric M. Petit