June Sunflower by Curtis Tappenden
This Scintillating NightRichard Berengarten
This scintillating night is full of subtlest
variations of light. They interlace
then cancel, like expressions on a face –
yours, in this case. How curiously we’re blessed,
witnessing this, as if being called, addressed
directly, on this huge-dimensioned base
by all the puzzling splendour of time-space
that placement and momentum might attest.
So let’s be true, then, to each other’s love,
though what we’d track in passing can’t be touched –
scarcely discerned – in those far heights above;
and though we pass like shoals of arrows clutched
by wind in soaring flight and sunlight-flecked
in sentient transience here all things connect.
First Kiss
Richard Berengarten
Aroused awareness (body’s being) dawns –
then, flaring, flushes tides along the blood.
Delightful, light-full, double touch that burns,
this kiss cuts lies away with radiant blade.
All previous loss (hope, fear) disbands and drains
and our most potent self-deceits lie floored.
All argument, integument of brains,
all prejudice, lies washed away in flood.
Eureka moment. Past illusions fall.
‘We love each other.’ Now we realise
uncovering (discovering) is all.
Mists tumbling waft away from widened eyes,
humbled, mere human, doubly huge and small,
in wonder, under far unfolding skies.
Siesta
Richard Berengarten
Where does your skin, or mine, begin or end?
Stilled in the wake of storms we woke and spurred,
my borders, lying next to yours, float blurred
among these waves we failed to tire or spend.
Through hand-clasp, elbow-crook, hip-fold, knee-bend,
you wrapped me in you as our passion stirred
(and through each other’s passions, more incurred).
And still our bodies merge. Our beings blend.
What shall be said then (rich loss? faint tristesse?)
when what we know is this calm tenderness?
How brutal separation is – and yet
now, as we sleep-wake, cool net curtains let
kind breeze in from this sunny afternoon.
All from Notness
Sonnets
(published by Shearsman Books, 2015)
