THE DAY I WAKE TO FIND YOU

(a sestina)  
 
The day I wake to find you lying there  
With twisted sheets in morning sleep with me  
To find your face in close relief aware  
And know the feel of your hand on my skin  
Your sleepy eyes as they slowly embrace
That you and I become our day’s first sight  
 
To wake and have your wonder fill my sight  
Recalling my last view, you sleeping there  
Once claiming love in ourselves' full embrace  
In giving all to you and you to me  
To trade our "words for words" in "skin for skin"  
That we in love become fully aware  
 
For touch enthralls our verse in flesh aware  
Ourselves from page to naked in our sight  
As if our poems found in formly skin  
Had brought us face to face in loving there  
So we became as one this you and me  
And sent our bodies gifts of gates embrace  
 
I rise for you as you for me embrace  
Senses engaged electric and aware  
My reveling in you as you in me  
Honor in touch and taste in sound and sight  
That in our want we bring each other there  
A worship born in words, complete in skin  
 
As we anoint, awash the other’s skin  
With open gates of higher love's embrace  
Now lost in afterglow collapsing there  
The hum we feel together now aware  
We taking joy in all that fills our sight  
Spent love’s expression shining, you and me  
 
Enfolding then, as sleep takes you and me  
Our bodies touch as if we had one skin  
Eyes slowly close enjoying one last sight
Together still as new dream worlds embrace  
Though sleep has claimed, we remain aware  
That we in loving arms entwining there  
 
To drift in dreams ‘til new dawn’s sights embrace  
When your hand on my skin brings me aware  
The day I wake to find you lying there