The Intimate Ache

There is the letting go and
there is the letting God.

Both are very nearly, very
nearly, very impossible.
And still the heart screams
for release.

Take it from me, you, Lord,
who hold out your universal
palm, wide and warm and deep
and all encompassing. Take.

It from me, this bloody muscle
that beats a steady rhythm of
pain and pleasure, pleasure
and pain, for all things cost.

I have loved and lost, as the old
song goes. And loved again.
And again, and the disappointment
is deep, and cuts, and wounds

for life. Nothing passes. Not even
the pleasure, which keeps
one foot in front, one dragging
behind, dead limb

drawing a line in the dust
of the drunken and maddening road.
It is what drives me. This ravenous
appetite for joy. Remembered

as if I had once known it. I did
know it. The bond that hums
through the bones when a touch
is not just a touch, but a meshing

of body soul spirit mind and bone,
lattice of skeletons molten together
into one clanking bell
ringing in the morning.

Passage

by Zinta Aistars


"Rudens," watercolor by Viestarts Aistars.





So opens another October:
with serene and golden face,
its blush still a secret kept close

to the aching of a summer heart,
as yet undiscovered. Autumn undresses
all the wounds of previous seasons

exploded, lush and vulnerable,
raw and naked to a thousand eyes.
Unashamed of its fiery suffering,

an honor well earned, if not deserved.
Denuded limbs soon exposed
to opening sky,

to be dressed in the white veils
of the sanctified.

Lapsus Memoriae

By Zinta Aistars


Photo courtesy of Melissa V. Bowman




The week has been a long one,
even – the year, the decade,
this life spanning nearly
a half century but one.

Rain gathers in the crook
of an exploded Friday.
We used to say: thank God
it is Friday, day of release,

redemption of all weekday sins,
to be born into the weekend
a squawling babe, innocent
and clean. Pink. Smooth-skinned,

untouched. By anyone.
Even so and in spite, knowing
it was but illusion, wide
of the mark, always

just, and our lapsing
into the pleasantries of self
deception, an error
of flawed happiness.

Now refuted. It was laced,
it seems, and in retrospect,
with errors and slips, delusions
and momentary hallucinations,

a meandering of the lonely
hanging out, side by side,
gazing into the same
vacancy.