Salt and light

Our hands, as well as eyes,
Meet when you pass the salt.
Indeed, life is encounter
(Buber has it down pat).
I could have asked you for
Your name, but you’re my wife,
My cure-all, like salt-water,
Sweat, tears or the sea, as
Isak Dinesen said.

I’d go to war for you
As people did for salt,
Which set off great upheavals.
At least no one has asked
That I pay for your smile.
This would be like a tax
On salt, one of the fuses
Of the French Revolution,
And which made Gandhi lead
The people to the sea
On a march towards freedom.
And yet no salt, whose weight
Was worth in gold, has value
More than you–caravans
Traversing the desert,
Carrying salt pillars,
The Roman wagons wheeling
Down the Via Salaria
Direct from the salt flats
By the Tyrrhenian Sea,
I would have joined them all
If I had you beside me,
Or would have forgone each
Finding myself alone.
The real salt is love,
Kindness, the glass of water
Offered to one unknown,
Which need can turn one into
To him who has a heart
That’s curved upon itself,
As mine becomes at times.
May my hand turn to salt
Which once was currency
My words be caravans
On the salt road to you
Or to the stranger who
May have your face, an angel
I might have entertained
Without my knowing it
By being welcoming,
As you are to me now
Handing me the salt shaker.

The evening’s getting darker,
And, as you show me how
To light the lamp you’re keeping
For years inside a garret,
The thoughts I have detained
Fly out towards a spindle,
Which turns the white moths into
Light threads that blunder through
Your fingers like fire ribbons.
I sense your hesitancy,
As though eyeing a fault
Somewhere, while your hand mimes
The flame. Near a bookshelf
You set the lamp apart
To have a wider view
Of that to which we’re thrown–
The space which things that waver
Now wish to be free of,
Released from flesh and bone,
To take off beyond reach
For light’s own infinite sea.
Shadows on the wall,
That’s all for you and me,
Just mere shadows of slats
Inside a lighted area,
Which leave us deeply burning
To be eternal dwellers
Within light’s Nessus’ shirt,
Love, the pure relevance.

What I can do with you
Tonight is contemplate
The light as diadem
Of the lamp next to me,
Which is beyond the need
Of but an earthly notion.
Before the light, one uses
None other than love’s syntax,
If only for a while,
And always one is tasked
With turning all reversals
With kindness as default.
The arm I put around you
Is light’s arm–what light said
Is the word that’s between us
A word that does not waver
Because it is our life
And there is nothing better
What we are looking at
When we lose light’s favor
Are shadows, but we’re called
Not for night but for sunrise.