On Tenderness

Weary, for lack of tenderness –

Like pillars of granite, each one of us impassible!

We lack that desperate quality tenderness.

It is a roaring lion hiding behind softness

In the kingdom of our hearts, because both

Belong to a full-bodied display of love.

Tenderness leads us to the ladle of Susceptibility

Sensual and iridescent –

If we taste, we die quick and marvelous

If we don’t taste, we die – only later, upright and cold.

To be human is to not know what is good for us

But to think otherwise –

Tenderness is thoughtless and I bow to that

Unprotected quay where

Shame, akin to fear, becomes obsolete, as does the

Gatekeeper, troll, demon – our fastidious will

Which fastens our hearts to the granite pillar.

Tenderness makes us alive

To a primal neediness, our clumsy condition –

I need you: what tender, silken words,

Flight of birds, ascending vine, courier of love!

May whatever is left of our collective compassion,

     Whatever we haven’t rolled the stone over

          Or exiled deep within our spirit, or

      Leashed to the pillar for fear of free exchange,

May the gamble of you surrendering to me –

Be gathered in by the worn out and weary ends

And wrung desperately; for we

Need to need one another in a new way.