Thomas A. Thomas: While hearing the poet

reading love poems wherein he answers
questions asked by his wife about the length
and breadth and depth of his love for her
who could I think of but my own beloved.

There was that moment when distant blue
shone through centuries and more,
blue even older in your eyes blue reflected
millennia ago off the Euphrates the
Blue Nile the whole blue Pacific Ocean

when I knew I had loved you before there were
Octobers and Augusts, before monuments
made to the moon and the stars, which were
ours even before calendars were marked on
stones or bones those thousands of years love

before anyone had left Africa for Asia before
anyone knew the blue of the Aegean Sea
and its blueness and stars were etched
on stone and painted on walls. I loved you
sacred before temple, synagogue, or church

when love was blue water in a green cathedral
under a new blue sky and the water fell from
cliff stone into sun-sparkled air became the
dazzled light of water falling as I am still so
dazzled as earth draws me falling incandescent

for you now as through all those centuries
now as then as always I love you as the blue
water bends to touch the shore as we touched
our shores under moons and stars as we loved
again and again all this time since touch began.

~ after Aaron A. Abeyta

~~~~~

Copyright 2025 Thomas A. Thomas. First published in MacQueen’s Quinterly.

Thomas A. Thomas is a poet, photographer, and editor who has lived gratefully in the Pacific Northwest since 1981. His latest book is My Heart Is Not Asleep (MoonPath Press, 2024).