For the Poet’s Wife, on Her Birthday

For the Poet’s Wife, on Her Birthday

Sometimes the best poetry
you'll get from me is raw truth.
No rhyme. No meter. No form.
Just words that pour from my heart into yours.

The beauty of a real woman
is not in her shape, or her skin,
or even her smile;
it is in her eyes,
and the way she looks at you.
So look at me.

Kiss me your Strength
with lips soft as trust
and deft as a pickpocket.

Play me your Soul,
fingers flicking piano with skilled abandon,
write me your Anguish
in perfumed letters
at once filigreed and lush.

Grace me with your Love,
rowing a glass bottomed boat,
navigating the rocky coast of my life;
all I have to offer.

When my heart
needs to attend church,
it finds itself inside your own,
glorying in cathedral.

I lose myself in you,
and it feels exactly like being found,
every time you really see me.

You warm my every action
just as the sun
warms closed eyelids
by slipping in a morning window.

Our taste, a mix of coffee
in a moving night of cream,
and the martinis we shook,
I take from your lips,
which stirs my thoughts to sleep
and brings my day awake .





©2016 Christopher Reilley
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