Blues in Bed

Why get up from my dreaming of writing
the blues with strangers at a piano
when they are still all around me
laughing and adding verses like limericks
and lovers making light
of these bodies,
note by note,
between these white sheets
in the heat of an almost summer Sunday?

I turn to see you
looking at my sleepy face
smiling and welcoming me
into your arms
to hold me in the folds of flesh
like a sacred set
of breaths
only two can share
in the unbelievable
silence of knowing
unconditional love.

Hold me in this happy place where time stops
and then races ahead
and swirls around us
making no sense
of the ticking of clocks
or the white space
between the black keys
of days
that have stacked themselves
into years
that became a lifetime
of forgetting.

Pain is nothing
next to your chest
as I wrap my arms
around the thin frame
of the story
after story
that becomes the truth
of you.

Don’t wait to tell me anything.

In this dream of music memory,
the words weave
a gauze and smooth an ointment
that heal these wounds
we somehow have come to share.
Tear bandages of primitive strength
into strips that bind these insults
with another kind of light.

Through the open window of the universe
I can hear you humming
a familiar gospel
the shades of twilight
and indigo.