In your eyes I am little more than a girl

teetering on the brink of womanhood.

Innocent and free.

You wink and I am the sparkle that warms

the corner of your sight in the dead of winter.

 

In your smile I become April rain.

Purifying all the days of our yet to be.

Old as the earth.

Pure as the cherry blossoms.

 

In your arms I become a restless beat.

Tom-toms or nyabingi, I repeat

original rhythms in tlme to your heart.

The limbs of your body form the fortress of my love.

 

In your love I become a woman on fire,

burning from root to bloom.

I open to you like the tentative flickers

of a matchlegs ftame.

 

In our love we need no special day to celebrate.

The union of our souls began with our first breath.

And though we must return

to dust on the face of Mother's Earth,

our love shall turn to roots of strength and fortitude.

One day to bud and bloom again.

©April 1997.

Alice Lovelace, Remembering My Birth: Recent and Collected Poems
(Introduction by Dr. Ja Jahannes). Atlanta. Horizons Press, 1994.

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