The Two Loves

The love of a man is a strange thing to me.
It seems to me powerful, all consuming
Yet alien.
Something that burns inside me yet not of me
Something that brings me alive yet threatens to consume me.
Sometimes I feel it like a flame
Sometimes like a rock
Sometimes a pain
Of something struggling to be born or be
Trapped in circumstance and history.

The love of a woman I know and yet don’t know.
It surrounds me and cloaks me
Yet disappears.
Something that flows through me yet not of me
Something that connects me yet threatens to leave me out of control
Sometimes I feel it like a whirlpool
Never like a rock
Sometimes a fear
Of something about to be lost
Elusive of time and human grasp.

As bodies come together
They search for knowing beyond knowledge
 The body knowing that can only come to bodies
Entwined in a sensational quest.
Discovering the other within their passion
Is to know love’s fullness, to know love’s moods
To know the stranger within and without to know
The terrifying pleasure of dissolving the selves you know
As male and female, man and woman
Beyond both
Into the Otherness of Love