Drunk

I am drunk
on cheap liquor,
loud music,
wild abandon.

Drunk on the intimacy
of dancing
and talking all night
with this beautiful woman by my side.

I am drunk
on the touch of her fingers,
the light in her eyes,
the music of her laughter.

I am drunk
on this very moment,
as we stand on the pier
looking east over the river.

Our whole world
illuminated
in surreal relief by
the pre-dawn light.

We watch the sleeping ducks,
heads tucked perfectly into wing feathers,
gently rocking to the beat of tiny rippling waves
that lap at the rocks on the shoreline.

Our hands find the rhythm of the waves.
They caress each other.
Gently.
Hungrily.

I dare not
gaze into her eyes
lest I break the spell
of this perfect moment.

“Look at the ducks”, she says.
“Yes, aren’t they perfect?
Like this moment.”
This one perfect, precious moment.
Eternity is as close as the
infinite number of shades of blue
in the very-early-morning sky,
or the constant river, so close we can touch it.

And I say to her,
“This is why I write poetry.
To capture perfect moments,
like this one.”

Rare and fleeting as they are,
when I grasp them,
pour out their essence in ink on paper,
I touch the infinite.

And I know,
at this moment,
I am drunk
on love.

I am in love with this moment,
with these perfect, sleeping ducks,
with the perfect white, infinite light
on the pre-dawn horizon.

And, at this moment,
I am in love with the woman at my side.

I am drunk
and in love
with this perfect moment,
this glimpse of the infinite.

-- For CJ, 06/17/2006 0330 Hours, 5 and Diner Restaurant, Remembering Laughlin…