What is the Nature of your Strength?

What is the Nature of Your Strength?

What is the nature of your strength, My Love?
Is it parapets and towers,
with moats and showers
of piercing arrows that drop men dead,
and make their tombs among the bowers?

How have you stayed intact, My Love?
Have you kept yourself hidden,
denied when you’re smitten
with desire that longs to be touched, to be seen,
staying silent as a grave, visibility forbidden?

How are you able to evade, My Love?
Do you become the deer,
spurred to flight by fear,
Running ever quicker, quick as lightening, stop-then-faster,
Far too quick for the brand your heart to sear.

Then surely you must out-think, My Love?
Developing a stratagem,
Or perhaps a deadly pathogen,
To steal away the perpetrator’s soul and never let it harm,
The cries of the dead melodious to the would-be hunted.

What is more unbreakable than water?
What is better defended than air?
What can be stolen that is freely given?
What can be broken that isn’t there?

Vulnerability embraced is strength enlaced.
My Love, you’ll find nothing stronger,
Nor will you find endurance longer,
Yet soft and sensual, gentle as silk, and honey-sweet,
Never impeded vulnerability, My Love. That is my strength, my power.