The air — our air — did not need cleaning.  Clean

Was clean already.  Blackness of your hair

Was perfect.  Nothing like hot iodine

Was needed.  Scottish lochs did not need prayer.

Love’s prayer was prayer already in my veins.

Your revelation shone through vessels — heart

And arteries.  Blood’s scarlet left no stains.

Our loving stood in cleanliness apart

As Scotland’s salt-less lochs are held discrete

By hills.  Our heights were meant by God to clasp

The Eden mornings, never bittersweet

Till preachers added moral hiss’s rasp.

  You opened eyes to look at me through tears

    Of purity from distant untouched spheres.

~ Phillip Whidden