David Bryen is not the Flamenco dancer onstage, he is the quiet gentleman sitting at a corner table watching, reveling in the beauty, mystery, and power of the prayer. He takes notes, studies the dancer's rhythms, and retires to a place of solitude to practice what he has observed.

As I review my notes in preparation to write this, I realize I've highlighted far too many lines contained in The Man Loves the Wine She Serves Through Her Body to quote. Taken individually, the poetry is strong and sensual, but when read as a whole, a more courageous voice is heard. This is more than the heart of a poet; this is an exploration of what is divine.

David Bryen allows us to walk with him on a rather dangerous and maddening journey. He shares ecstasy, epiphany, loss, and in a particularly beautiful and vulnerable section, the celebration of mistake. There is no appreciation for ice without fire, nourishment without hunger, release without confinement, and David Bryen appreciates it all.

Early in the book, one particular passage from the poem Palace illustrates the struggle for connectivity repeated throughout the pages:

Your touch -
too wonderful to leave
too terrible to endure
far too ancient to replace -
holds me fast,
holds me helpless,
holds me alive in a way
I do not know how to live.

Through his search for connectivity and transformation, Bryen explores conscious development, the source of desire, longing as an exchange, the celebration of divinity through flesh and sensuality, giving, the return to the source of the divine, and the celebration of that return and marriage.

However, it is in the last three chapters of the book that Bryen goes a bit further and touches upon the most human aspects of sacred exploration: the divine paradox of human desire to be more than human, and the inevitable failure of that quest. It is in that quest, which must fail by its very nature, and in the celebration of that failure, that grace is divined.

Occasionally, we see glimpses of the sacred and divine, yet we are separated and separate: we are "the kiss, and what the kiss touches." And so we dance, with passion and power, staccato steps driven through magma, burning with each footfall, steps gifted to the Divine in reverence.

After reading The Man Loves the Wine She serves Through Her Body, I am convinced David Bryen does not dance alone.