This night is one of  joyful noises

 

I’m not even to your door yet

and I can hear you.  All day Love

in the mine, the cold of underground

wrapping my joints like bandages, the wetness

of groundwater, of unclean men and coal and yet

my body sang the day long as if on top of you. Slow

the rhythm of my shovel swinging, finding stone and lifting it,

over and over, ceaseless through the long darkness of days in caves,

but dear, each time my shovel cut that coal

it was not the song of steel and stone,

no love, it was the sounds you make

and digging today was nearly, me

hovering above your slender back, my fingers

curl around your shoulders, my grip

tightens around the long wooden handle,

the black ceiling crumbles as I take the wall.

 

I hear your laughter, my rough fingers

brush again

the softness of your neck. Coal fires

are being lit across the frozen north.

I’m digging faster now, men shout but yours is the only voice.

Black sweat covers my body and leaves

shining handprints

in the hollows of your waist, the white sheets and the stone walls of this dark place.

I’ll leave piles of rocks to the mark the way out.

I’m rolling you over angel, I need your face now,

your skin like pear flesh, touch my face now.

Press your palms against my eyes. Whistles

scream and the shifts change.

I move deeper into the mine, drunk

on coal dust and dreams of your face, shining

like a diamond, only

inches deeper. I drive

this chisel down, reaching for the light, love,

we are alone in the center of the earth. Every stone we touch

explodes, the sound of your breath rings off the chamber walls, our bodies

encircle each other, our ribs intertwine, our hands and hips and thighs,

our faces collide, gravity

and heat make us one, pulse.

 

I’m on the other side of the door now,

my heart,

open it.