Card 19: The Sun

When you show yourself to the woman

you love, you don’t know your fear

is not fear, itself. You have never been good,

but now you are so good,

who are you? Is it the liquidity of her skin

that bathes the world for you,

or her face, captured like a she-lion

in your own flesh?

This summerbed is soft with ring upon ring

upon ring of wedding, the kind

that doesn’t clink upon contact, the kind

with no contract,

the kind in which the gold is only (only!) light.

Cloud covers and lifts,

and sleep and night and soon enough, love’s

big fire laughs at a terrible burn,

but only (only!) because pain absorbs excess

joy and you shouldn’t flaunt

your treasures in front of all day’s eyes.