To My Love

Can there alight so fair a symbol as a butterfly whose flight arrested, stays upon my shoulder just as if you sent it there, suggested through an energy defined in your own sweetness, your own touch beyond carnality, where spirit plays? Can I not gaze from Venice on a dry and alien plain and see your name enshrined? And hear the gondoliers, who only gaze beneath their stance at lovers far removed from astral bliss, and barely listen as they throw their songs at queens of earthen skies? It is of you to make of flesh and breath a sacrament profane and numinous. It is of you to fill my being with a panoply of wealth I never thought to see-- of art from eastern shores, of part of every day's delight in birth and death repeated, mystery transcending time with life and lust and lepidoptera pervading every thought of you I own. How rare among the brightest stars you are! for none but you can shine upon one man and there complete twin souls-- one love sublime ~ This poem was written long ago for one person, but I have chosen to share it now. The name of the lover is embedded in the second stanza, and explains the location, the contrasting foil for that location, and the last line of the stanza. Only those who may determine that name (which has a double identity) through the clues here, will understand the relevance of each line of the stanza. Sorry. :-)