We need a word for love that is now grief,
Which refuses to collect dust in the glare and
Lively clatter of the heart;
Love of what was, that still is
Because stillness is precisely the puzzle
For our grinding, mule hearts — 
Heart like a catchment basin filling
To overflow then recede in accordance with the seasons — 
Yet the heart is a walking vessel in search of rain — 
Over and over we bolt from the discomfort of our
Agitated, unrestrained thirst that manages to
Eclipse us every time. Here it is, the skinned and meaty crux:
Love guides us intelligently, beyond our narrow rows of perception
To work the acres of our grief into mercy — 
Stopping, of course, to chew on our words
And lap at the cold rainwater from last season’s storm. 

Am I to desire you, lover, who teaches non-attachment?
I am tsunami; with violence and duration
My petitions, as in wave shoaling, heighten to break in fists
And sea spray upon your coastline.
Am I to desire you, lover, who speaks of immaterial love?
Alone, to embrace these long, lilac dusk shadows?
When your mouth is tropical water, a sleepy harbor
Of honeysuckle skin and halcyon limbs.
Am I to desire you, lover, who spins parables of reason?
You persuade me that need is only the howling infant,
With softness you cradle my angry wet face
With patience you crouch at the perimeter of this reality
Until I learn to swim in the waters of my ego, relentlessness,
And the miles and miles of longing.
Am I to desire you, lover, who is afraid of the word and the action?
I am sea storm and you are the fishing vessel,
I lap at the port of your manhood and obliterate your resolve
Until you commit to the bow of the word with conviction
And my miles and miles.
This poem is ogiji, sweet fugitive lover,
That my renunciation may suspend in your mind like
                  The Great Wave off Kanagawa.