Eating Sunbeams

Wheat-field with Crows
Vincent Van Gogh

I had every intention of writing a post about an encounter I had this weekend with a family at a lacrosse tournament. The usual stuff, story-making, the unraveling of story. Remembered trauma and the surprise of affirmation. I was thinking the tiles of showers, the place where the forehead rests, the groove. I was thinking of all the years.


But it's Pablo Neruda's birthday, and there's his love poetry.

Here's one:

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.

Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.

Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day

I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,

your hands the color of a savage harvest,

hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,

I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,

the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,

I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,

hunting for you, for your hot heart,

like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.