The Adoration of the Image of God

Words fail me.
Hair like brown twisted wild reeds
That grow in pure wide lonely places
To shimmer in the summer sun, the heart's heat.
Your bones, your skin are white rock --
Marble, alabaster, pearl, such small names
For an archetype incarnate.
Teach sculptors, painters, doctors, architects,
To know proportion, balance, and perfection.
I can feel, I would feel
The warmth of your chin on the back of my hand,
The faintest abrasion against the skin on the tips of my fingers
As I brush by your lip, lingering;
I can smell your scent, your salt, the heat of your hair,
I taste your eyelids (turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me);
Words fail me.

Grey sapphires look back at me, and I am a brown twisted wild reed.

The shape of your shoulder, the pulse of your chest,
Ideal and actual, beauty (these signs are what they signify).
The gentle skin where the lips shut sucking
At an image of life, twining sighs of life that moves with the passion of dying,
Bronze belly, lips and hands traverse muscle, muscle, muscle
Obediently; rejoice (again I say rejoice);
Hips sliding on their stone unbreakable frame, words fail me,
Smooth hairs and sinews, strong, beautiful;
Your strength is here
Your strength that is weakness, the strength that sums us up
In a concrete passionate act, heat to heat,
Exposing our innermost desires, the wand that lifts the veil of our mystery.
Your sex erect, yearning, daring,
Wishing and fearing to be known
For to be known in nakedness is to be loved or hated
And to be wounded in this fleshly head is to be wounded in the heart of the spirit.

Grey sapphires look back at me, and you are a brown twisted wild reed.

I would pour out my love, my adoration of the image of God, but
Words fail me;
I bury my head in you, bury your head in me,
Your strength is worthy, your beauty is holy,
I would say with every touch taste smell and look.
I receive your weakness into me because you are strong,
I take your strength into me because you are need.

Nothing suffices. I see no other way
Worthily to worship your beauty, I cannot refrain
From wishing to possess feel sleep beside you within you around you
Masculine maculate immaculate glory,
Archetype incarnate.

Jesus Christ.
What have we done? What have I done?
He looks just like You.

They all do.