The Dark-Eyed Chameleon

Behind your mask
lies a secret face
that the world has never seen.
But I have.

It is beautiful and terrible,
tearing at my desolate heart.
How I sought to heal
what can never be healed;
you cannot be healed.

The damage was so long ago.
To survive, you buried the unspeakable,
for protection took a mate
you did not love,
constructed an identity.

It seemed sturdy to most.
But the facade was always brittle
and cracks appeared, time and again,
flaking the plaster off your ochre wall.

Troubled one, an odyssey
would be your fate.
From city to city you roamed,
with a child now,
building then breaking bonds,
never happy.
A curse hung over you.  

And finally you came to me,
my dark-eyed chameleon.
... If only I had known all this.

Your story, laced with tragedy.
A life tortured, unfulfilled.
How could I not respond?

You, blessed being,
won’t you walk down my path?
I have been waiting here
for so many years,
lonely, knife-edged,
the beloved has appeared,
“The Invitation” issued.

Flashing eyes, face of heaven, fertile mind
-- and you want me.
I am reborn, my suffering transfigured.
The sun shines brightly, corona of joy.
Our love pure and powerful,
our destinies locked together.

How did it happen, and so soon?
We need no logic, living as lovers do,
heeding a higher call:
be devoted and vulnerable.
All seems right, most of the time.

Wait! Is this important?
Need I ask who you are?
I trust you will reveal. 

Rain fell steadily today.
It always makes me wistful.
No matter, more hours to spend
in the warm tent of our love.

But you are silent and far away.
Where? You can never say.
I have seen this chasm before;
it is uncharted and buried deep within you.

And when I try to excavate, you dissolve
into a smile that could melt a glacier.
“Our love is the truth,” I heard you say,
not long ago.

Today is different.
You are mute, frozen, alone                      
on a dead planet without a name,
orbiting a dead sun.
I cannot hail you,
my precious, my sphinx,
across these light years of the soul.

“It will pass,” you say, and in time it does.
But this ghost, as ancient as thee,
never sleeps.

Under us the ground is always shifting,
unstable like our California.
I still think my love is all you need.
Am I a fool, a saint -- or a target?

Your girl, wonderful and radiant,
a small flower unfolding into early bloom.

She touched my heart so deeply,
and I touched hers, I do believe.
Innocent, uncomplicated love
freely given between us two.

Sheer delight of child’s play,
tucked her in at night,
sat in the dark til Dreamland descended,
marveled that this special bliss
had finally come my way.
Joy without measure.
I thanked the Creator
-- for the first time in my life.

As we rode together that night,
shrieking and giggling,
I barely noticed your black cloud.
Though I could not have known,
this would be our final ride.

The sky is blue
and filled with your tomorrows.
Denied good-byes, farewell, dear sprite.
You must be a big girl now.

The fatal blow is struck by telephone.
A low comedy of excuses
finally gives way to a hollow metal sound:
“I don’t love you anymore.”

But who is speaking?
You shared my heart, my bed,
only hours ago.
The monsters who made you
are hovering near;
we were introduced just the other day.
They still have you in curious thrall.
And someone has decided:
Our love must die.

My world, my dream is crumbling
in this tiny room, beneath a flickering bulb.
You say you prayed for us,
but your god has failed.

I am shaking.
Opened so wide, shields lowered,
with time exploding.
I am being cast to the winds,
without explanation, without apology.

Did I ever know you?
My questions will echo through the years,
down De Chirico’s empty streets.
As for you, the rest is silence.

I am swept out to sea, pulled under
by a rip tide of grief and devastation.
I tumble and gasp;
hands reach out, voices cry --- all a blur.
My fate is to ride or die.
This journey can never be described.
Hold on.

Eons have drifted by;
finally the grip relaxes and I surface.
It is night, the air is warm,
stars swim above me.

I pull for shore, alone, unseen;
the dome of heaven lights my way.
And now I have reached the beach.
I am no longer thinking of you.