Cherished

Back when my lad (now 20, and about whom I still say: "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased...") was about 5 and I was putting him to bed, I had just finished reading an email from a fellow expatriate here. It contained a book review on something dealing with anecdotal material from witnesses to SS atrocities in Poland. A former villager told of seeing an SS guy strolling casually down the alley or street or road, whistling merrilly as he dangled a just still living and moaning infant on the tip of his bayonette, its last breath still audible to the witness. I sat stock still. I was, needless to say, so deeply upset at reading this, so traumatized because no matter how much material you take in – and I'd already imbibed a very, very great deal – it whacks you over that cliff of the most terrible distress, every time. Every time. So now I gotta put my laddy to bed. We sat in the near pitch dark room.  Rather than singing or playing, I was dead silent. Being a child, he sensed my sadness.

In his half-Doitch, half-English, he asked me what was wrong. Of course telling him anything like this was completely out of the question, but I had to be straight with him. I replied, "Well, hon', Papa is just very very sad right now." Asking me why, I replied again, "Sometimes there are others in the world, children, yes also children, who suffer or have suffered such things I cannot tell you, and your Papa is just too sad about it not to be sad." He wanted to comfort me.

So I did what actually wasn't our habit, but also not unheard of: I said, "Let's put our hands together here, you put yours together and then mine over yours, so... And Papa is going to pray, and this will be your little bed-time prayer, just yours." And I began, "My Beloved Lord and Cherisher, may all children everywhere be as loved, and as cherished, and as safe and secure as me."

In German there is no one word for cherish, except in cherishing an idea or a wish. To cherish a person is conveyed in a phrase, and my German idioms were less up to it at that time. While the sweet sound of our word, cherish, no doubt from the French cher, is to endear – we all know it conveys something more than words, notwithstanding a popular single on the charts back in the mid-'60s.

My little son asked me in his 5-year-old attempt at a new English word, "Was ist 'chewish'?"

I told him, "Well, you know what it is to love someone a whole lot, like how your Papa loves you, right? Cherish is something totally – lile you could never imagine livng without that one, ever. It's like....this:"

And I proceeded to give him pecks on the skin of his back, along the shoulders and between the shoulder blades, each kiss a dry and tender covenant of everlasting love toward my own child, each kiss a protection, a prayer for his well-being. After a few of these, I said, "Cherish is like...that. Okay? Now to bed with you."

We sat there a moment, in the dark – or I sat, he leaned over my arm some. And then he said, "Chewish me again."

And of course, I did.

I cherish him now as I ever have, and I will always have his back. 

When A Man Makes Love

(July 1987, Monterey)

My lips parted   and I asked the Woman:  Woman,
       how does a man make love?  And she replied
       with such direct simplicity:  O - and
               are you a man?
My ears blushed and my breast flushed full
         I said Yes. I am.         Listen, she said,

For a man first makes love with his ears.
   He listens intently for the silent rustle
      of love's whisper, of skin wishing to yield itself
            to the hand's good touch.
From the fingertips to the soles of his feet
does a man make love   his tongue
    quivers at the mere thought of his beloved's form
                                     his ears
   carry the beloved's name whether it is known or not.
 

The lover is always erect,   never asleep,
                                     his attention steady.
His body is clean but washed with abandon,
     not primped as some self-adulator.  Every hair
       on his body responds to the scent of his beloved
         and his nostrils are always flexed for it.
   What of her absence, I asked, How
           does a man stand the loneliness?
                   She drew so close

 
I lost my breath in the sweetness of her kiss
   and therein was imparted - as the vital sap of my loins
      rose from root to trunk to branch - that
             Woman is never absent.
A man can never love enough.  To love as a man makes love
   is to come out his top    because
   while he loves the Woman he worships the Goddess that she is.

Woman is a body   and so she is every body
  and all that is beautiful in the eye
    of the Man who beholds her
             is Woman.
And in recognizing her she must be touched
   and kissed and carressed and looked at
     and fondled,    every inch of  her
    must be loved and dearly cherished first
       for her to be enabled to enter
         the body  where she belongs.

My eyes hazed in sweat      I asked How
     is a Woman's body never absent?  And her form
    burst over me and I was bathed in her
as though she were liquid air, and I saw with all my heart:
Woman is an aura, and even as you would stimulate
  all those areas of her flesh with your gentle fingers
     and tongue   so must you skillfully and generously
                                     speak to her.

A man makes love
   when he is direct and kind   firm and assuring.
  A man without sincerity never makes love  there is
       no interest there   and no balls.
A man makes love
    when his gifts are frequent and thoughtful -
    their spontaneity is what makes them original.
    Timing is everything  for the man.
Never an abusive word   never an abusive gesture,
  never even in jest hurting the Feeling of the Woman -
      That is how a man makes love.

For him she is ageless, a man does not make love
   by judging looks or counting rings on a tree.
       His eyes are fixed on the Woman timelessly.
I have wondered, I began - and she quietly
     inclined her face to hear -
           Can a Woman love too much?
She smiled and brushed my forehead
    and my temples with such affection I held her
        hand there with mine and breathed
            its touch into my pores.  She answered,

She might change her mind as to the choice of men -
   but she cannot love too much.  No one can love enough.
  When a man makes love he is knowing all the time
    that everything beautiful that he could ever set eyes on
          or give ear to   or touch and hold,
            every expression of beauty,
              every affectionate gesture    is Woman.
        That is Whom he loves.

And Woman?  She is herself the bottom line
        and the last word
           on the very Beauty of God.