Your face is a kind of art, 
which is to say it makes one lonely man feel  
every dead and lost joy which this Earth 
had beaten down.  
For me, I need nothing more. 
 
You formed a new you in clay, a vision  
that one day you would become.  
You made yourself for yourself,  
and you cannot help but shine now. 
 
So, stare at your masterpiece,  
for a little while. They might  
call it vanity, but we know better. 
When you tend to yourself, you grow  
in beauty (of both the soul and vessel),  
daily for the rest of all time. Know you owe  
no one your sacred fire and breath. 
 
Sculptor, statue, chisel, muse: 
all of these things are held 
in you, for all the world 
to see. There is no reason to atone  
for being brilliant, every inch,  
every brain cell, down to your atoms 
and their quarks. You are one 
of the visions heaven sends down 
to remind us love exists; it lives 
within your words. 
 
I will ask and expect  
nothing–grateful for what the tide  
brings in and out each day, what  
the sun shines on, what the trees 
shake leaves onto (and sap). 
And all the painful years gone by, we 
can paint them over in hues our 
eyes are just relearning, under 
sunshine cascaded onto weary faces.  
There is a soft and quiet place, our  
minds build together,  
here, when the dust of the day settles.  
 
We have been un-traveling old roads,  
colliding and running back  
and forth, remembering and forgetting– 
time is a center with lines  
stretching in every direction,  
spreading from memory to future 
to this moment where my eyes 
snag on yours, and don't mind 
being caught.