one of my very favorite poems

i have been thinking about this poem a lot lately because of all the spring flowers i have been enjoying (there is a line "flesh like the bright puffs the flower-god puts on in spring, flimsy for needing to last"). as you know if you have been reading my blog, i have been been wrapping my head around the idea of non-permanence when it comes to life, so that line would echo in my head when i would see a flower. i have been trying to let things be what they are and enjoy each moment i have on its own terms without thinking how it won't last or how i want it to be different. i still have a long way to go, but hey, life's about the journey, right?

this poem is by a poet i found in a sort of unusal way :) back when i was first dating nathaniel and kim was first dating james, she and i went to ogden to meet the boys. we had planned to meet them in one of those book/music/movie mega-stores, and we got there before them. so we were over in the poetry aisle and we spotted a book titled "10 poems to change your life". kim and i scoff (we are sort of poetry elitists) and i open the book at random to see if my life was about to be changed. the poem that i opened to was called "last gods" by galway kinnell. i read it aloud and kim and i just sat there speechless when it was done. i quietly and carefully placed the book back on the shelf, giving the poem the reverence it deserved, and thus was born my adoration of galway kinnell.

the poem i want to share isn't actually "last gods" though i highly recommend the poem. it's in his book "when one has spent a long time alone", as is the poem i am about to share.

so... without further ado i give you...
AGAPE
I want to touch her.
Once. Again. I will wait
if I must. Outwait.
Wait so long she will age,
pull even, pass. How
will she like it then if
when i bend to kiss wrinkles
ray out around her
mouth? I want to hold her.
In the flesh. All night.
Flesh like the bright
puffs the flower-god
puts on in spring, flimsy
for needing to last
but this one flashing
circuit through her
apparitions. Did she fear,
when i stood with the
precipice at my back
and beckoned, that i was a specter
she would plunge through?
At the agape, love's addicts
lie back, drink, listen
to a priestess discourse
on love rightly understood.
As soon as cured anyone
can get up and go over
and bestow the Kiss
on anyone. Now the others
have disappeared - maybe
cured, probably joining lips
behind doors. It is
the Fourth Cup - the hour
for the breaking of the
transubstantiated body.
What if we break, the priestess
and I, the body
together? And I fall
in fear and longing?
And she commands me to
dissolve in the light
of love rightly understood,
or if i can't, to put
a gun to my head? I don't want
to know that on the other
side of the pillow nobody
stirs. I don't want ever
again to sit up half the night
and laugh and forget not
all of us will rejoice
like this always.