BECOMING VAPOR AND RAIN by Kai Coggin

Today is Valentine's Day, a day to celebrate love…

I was tucked away one morning, writing a love poem for the woman that named my bones holy, the woman that made my smile come out of hiding, the woman that I love with all the lifetimes I can muster. The words poured out from the inspiration I received after reading one of my favorite lines of poetry from Pablo Neruda, “I want to do with you what spring does to the cherry trees.”  My poem "Becoming Vapor & Rain" flowed out of me for her, my beloved.

That night, as we played checkers and laughed, words of my poem came out of her mouth even though she had never read or seen the poem with her eyes! She had already absorbed the poem with her heart, with the thoughts I was projecting as I wrote. This is how close we are in this love, DNA entwined, almost one person.

There is one person out there who will love you in all of your light and shadows, in a way that echoes through all of your lifetimes, in a way that awakens you to the highest within yourself, just so you can match the Divinity and Beauty in them. Wait for that person.  You deserve that LOVE. Until then, love yourself deeply. Prepare the banquet. Turn your face to the sun and know that it is a mirror.

Becoming Vapor and Rain

by Kai Coggin

“I want to do with you what spring does to the cherry trees.” - Pablo Neruda

Coax

you open

with soft color, 

pull you back from 

winter’s dead lips, 

you are naked, 

stripped

and I will warm you

with the sun

I hold on my brow-line, 

fire that wants to burn your name 

into the hips of the earth.

I offer you

this open heart, 

bury it 

underneath

your branches, 

until I root 

into your roots, 

until we tangle

into forests of wanting

into a system of knowing 

what only we know, 

nourish, 

soil, 

earth, 

mouth,

dear love, 

I want to crack open the sky

with my tongue against the breeze, 

I will be a cloud

that follows you to the ocean, 

a loyal fog,

be the river that meets me there, 

and we will merge, 

make a beautiful steam, 

evaporation of desire, 

evanescence of impulse and lust, 

we will rise as vapor together

into the mouth of blue, 

we will come down 

like rain, 

our atoms, 

our bodies, 

becoming joined water, 

filling all the empty hollows with our deluge,

making pools that reflect the moon,

this is union, love.

This is how I found you

when all I had

was the taste of wanting on my lips,

I followed the water, 

I flowed into everything 

until you floated up into me,

you are my budding hope opening, 

blossom of all that is beauty, 

heat, 

heat, 

we will rise like heat

into the upward draft of zephyrs, 

and there 

we will carry on this dance, 

this perpetual cycle 

of becoming lifted vapor and gentle rain, 

rising and falling 

live the heaving, breathing earth, 

making everything wet and new with our love.

You Become Me Become You
(For Joann, always)

"Does the cosmic space, we dissolve into, taste of us then?" - Rilke, the second elegy

On a night

of playing checkers and laughing, 

we exchange cloud-filled breath

into the frog-crooning night,

the air hints at summer,

the window is wide open, 

both to our living room 

and to this higher realm

beyond the mental body, 

this place where the soul speaks

beyond the footfalls

of self-effacing questions,

we are mountains trading hearts,

there is freedom in the way 

we swirl around each other in flight.

fading into and out of.

In passing conversation, 

you randomly recite the words

of a poem that I wrote hours ago

without ever reading it,

you use the exact phrases, 

almost line by line,

talk about roots tangling,

and forests of trees,

and ripping open spring cherry blossoms, 

and you say it all with the same wild wanting

I used when I wrote the poem

and I say, laughing,

“You just said the exact words 

of the poem I wrote this morning!”

And we both know what it means - 

you are so attuned 

to my heart, 

that I need not dwell

on “how did you do that?”

You 

become 

my thoughts 

and

the words

I hold inside

resonate through you 

like your body is a cave

and your mouth is my echo.

I know the priceless reality

of this love, 

we have become one, 

not in the traditional sense, 

not in the sense of I do’s, 

but in the sense of reds and blues

glowing into healing purple, 

in the sense of this is my broken shell,

fill me with all your light, 

in the sense of I will stand by you, 

with my sword ready to fight, 

just so you can remember your own grace, 

in the sense of you will never be lonely

and I will never be far,

I am the universe gifted to you, 

and you are the universe gifted to me.

I have felt 

the warmth of infinity 

on your lips

and burst 

into a new born star, 

showering fire blue light

into dark ever-expanding space,

you have danced a swirling trail of supernovas

that reaches through countless millennia

and become every Queen at once.

I can taste the stardust

on your teeth. 

Kai Coggin  is a poet and author living on the side of a small mountain in Hot Springs, AR. She holds a BA in Poetry and Creative Writing from Texas A & M University. Kai writes poems on love, spiritual striving, injustice, metaphysics and beauty. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Blue Heron Review, Lavender Review, Broad!, The Tattooed Buddha, Split This Rock, Yellow Chair Review, Drunk Monkeys, Snapdragon, ANIMA, Elephant Journal, and many other literary journals, as well as anthologized in several international collections. Kai is the author of PERISCOPE HEART. (Swimming with Elephants Publications, 2014). Her poetry has recently been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Bettering American Poetry 2015. She is also a Teaching Artist with the Arkansas Arts Council, specializing in bringing poetry and creative writing to youth. www.kaicoggin.com

~If you are interested in seeing your poetry appear in this blog, or submitting a poem by a woman that has inspired you, please click here for submission guidelines. I greatly look forward to hearing from you!~