Her Arms Ancient

She feels remembered
an old trail charted in youth
and revisited in old age
when all life's victories have faded into legend
and all old sins have found their way toward absolution
she makes prayers worth reciting
as each one that spills from lips finds avenues and updrafts
of butterfly wings and hot summer breezes
to rise upward into the sky

with her
the futility of faith becomes irrelevant,
replaced by the blind hope
believed by hundreds of thousands of dead souls long buried

the press of bare skin on bare skin
develops a rhythm rock bands will spend centuries trying to capture,
the way folk tunes and sacred Latin chants did
after they replaced the beats of drums
pounded out by Cro-magnons and hominids for untold millennia before

she tastes of joy poured into skin
Arizona sun tea on a July afternoon

the reason for jaunts to the creek
or midnight hikes beneath moonlight
become understandable in her arms,
pining me whatever gravity she chooses to surrender to in the daylight

I yield my intentions
suspend resistance
become a rock for her waters to cascade over
and dream of being swept away in her currents
to taste the lips of the seas she carries us toward