Teresa Roberts

TERESA ROBERTS

The Mating of Raptors

Lust and fear and the rushing earth,
Blurred below us - we mate wrapped in wind,
The tumultuous air, shrieking,
Caught in our aerial passion.
Your beak catches my nape
Forcing me, yet we stay airborne
By precision flight, our bodies as one.
To survive such loving, we must trust
Each other's movements, trust the instant
Before ecstasy becomes danger,
Where air and speed and our heat unite
Into a force that cracks clouds to thunder.

Each time, climbing toward climax, my fear rushes in.
But I know my own wings,
Know your strong pinions,
Know the delicate abandon required
For the erotics of wind and sky.
You will not let me go
Until, sated, we seek a safe aerie.

Surfing in the Hurricane

He rides hurricane waves
Exultant on a scrap of fiberglass.
Mad perhaps, but I envy such madness.
Not conquering but dancing
With a force that can consume you. Moth
To flame, surfers to stormsurf -to love
Is to court glorious annihilation,
Perfect consummation.
Every time we enter the bedroom I know
That only one may emerge,
A hermaphrodite carrying
One heart, one spirit.
The two of us perfected as one.

Atoms

What endures?
Bones of the land, curve of the moon?
Who knows how long
The fickle constancy of the cycling moon will last?
Mountains wear to hills, and hills to plains,
And even stars die in time.

What endures?

Last night, under a full August moon,
Bathed in silver and sweat,
We cried out as we moved together.
Oh, these bodies will not endure, beloved, nor the oak trees
That sheltered us, nor the bench
On which we loved, no, not even earth
Or moon that stood as witness.
But atoms-atoms migrate. Shifting nature, still they go on.
And I swear that the very atoms of us,
Present at the birth of the universe,
Are marked by the love that binds us,
And no matter what permutations
They may take in the long future, they will yearn
Toward one another-what once was me drawn
With a force beyond physics to what once was you.

And when our sun dies and our moon explodes
From those magnificent death throes
And the earth flies off lifeless, uncentered,
Our charged atoms will travel space, seeking
A place where we can re-form together-
As roses, as starlings, as odd,
Many-colored creatures, lovers
That Earth never dreamed.