The Embrace

You weren't well or really ill yet either;
just a little tired, your handsomeness
tinged by grief or anticipation, which brought
to your face a thoughtful, deepening grace.

I didn't for a moment doubt you were dead.
I knew that to be true still, even in the dream.
You'd been out—at work maybe?—
having a good day, almost energetic.

We seemed to be moving from some old house
where we'd lived, boxes everywhere, things
in disarray: that was the story of my dream,
but even asleep I was shocked out of narrative

by your face, the physical fact of your face:
inches from mine, smooth-shaven, loving, alert.
Why so difficult, remembering the actual look
of you? Without a photograph, without strain?

So when I saw your unguarded, reliable face,
your unmistakable gaze opening all the warmth
and clarity of you—warm brown tea—we held
each other for the time the dream allowed.

Bless you. You came back so I could see you
once more, plainly, so I could rest against you
without thinking this happiness lessened anything,
without thinking you were alive again.

The Embrace is what love symbolizes- the idea of loss not controlling you, but letting your love take control over your loss. This poem speaks of the gratitude of the surviving lover that he has a chance to say goodbye (albeit in a dream) to the person he loved without reliving the grief of his dying, seeing his partner as he was before the trauma and changes wrecked by illness. (Especially the stresses and wasting that tends to be wrought by AIDS.). I personally wonder if many people have had such a dream as this. The certainty that this was only a dream and yet the eagerness to participate it. To experience it and remember it all, to record it knowing this would be the only contact you might ever have with this loved one.The utter peace of leaning your head on the shoulder of the lost love, the familiar shoulder that you know in your mind is no longer of this earth. But in your heart it is as solid as it ever was. One last chance to experience the whole, entire person. The Embrace is one of the best poem written by mark Doty