In 1971, with a handsome young Army man named Patrick and a Korean-American young woman named Cho. We went away for her school break, to celebrate our safer lives and our long lasting love, to French Polynesia, via Papeete, Tahiti, which was truly in the south Pacific. We were also going to visit the retired General. Of course, in this new year, I had another month’s leave. In Tahiti, the sea is neither blue nor green, but is a color in between. The deep dark hole of cold of old Chicago is not here, just the warmth aglow. Our egos are neither gone nor overblown, but in balance, as the known. The calming waves roll, amounting here their toll from the other side of the world. I am beside her, astride the duality of the yin and the yang. There is brightness all about these shifting sands of time, a heart warm beside mine. The birds come down from the sky to pick the table dry, as the ghosts of Pacific walk the waves, the captains of old. The wind on through the curtains of the hut flew, as I wrote some poems anew.

After love was made, we, connected, stayed, and, in each other’s embrace we laid, still in place, while our senses melted away, and were felt no more that day, having been replaced by a new sense, a joy that lay beyond sense—a realm of calm deeply felt, as everywhere it dwelt, a sensation both mystical and totally magical. In it we drifted, crossing the oceans filled with good emotions, and floated down through deep caverns; oh, deep we flew, rising and falling through a space where no thoughts could race, weightless, unlimited, unmeasured, in the poetic land of many pleasures, there becoming near invisible, losing our bodily presence, choosing to remain as one, although to even move would have required too much effort—of which we had none, for, in spirit we had one become—ghostly phantoms, specters with human powers known only in myth, lying, awash, on our love made shore, our senses shining forevermore, like the sun, a scarlet flame above, as beings quenched in the sea of love. The pulse of love was still much with us as we lay awash on the shore, resting, entwined, within the paradise of lovemaking, where, we rode upon the waves, receding And returning, wet with liquid peace, fulfilled, as now and yet again small wavelets from the soul’s ocean of emotions swept on through us, in ripples, echoes of the storm’s mighty swell, vibrating and rinsing.

Waves seemed to come from within us, yet, from all around, relaxing us, as each other we kissed, while rivulets ran back into the sea, every drop tingling as it found us in caress, then another, and yet another drop quivered its waving way over us, cascading, while we yet embraced, connected all the while in with one All, flowing, immersed in the romantic afterglow, with water sinking into the sands, and half drying before wetting again, moisture rising up into the air, in one fluid motion, toward the sun, then, yet one last whisper of watery sensation, calling us back into the sea. … “Come, new friends,” said the General, “To hear of the dark, the light, and the never.” “We are here, being ever.” “There are books unwritten and never told.” “We can listen until we get old.” “By what muted shore of the dark river did its strand call us forth?” “We’re sure that we’ll never hear worse.” “By what far edge of furrowed forest didst the Khmer Rouge seek our name?” “Oh, General, through what hazy depth of gloom hast thy warriors and thou tread and threadest?” “Gather thee round and you shall knowest.” He had found his ‘Enchanted Evening’, in his love lady, a nurse, in an echo of ‘South Pacific’.