Half awake, I was imagining
a friend’ s young lover, her ash blonde hair, the smooth
taut skin of twenty. I imagined her
short legs and dimpled knees.
The door scraped open,
but eyes closed, I saw nothing. The mattress sagged.
She laid her head on my chest, and murmured love
against my throat, almost humming, approaching song,
so palpable I could hold her only chastely,
if this was chaste. I couldn’ t move my hand
I know I’ ll lose her.
One of us will decide. Linda will say she can’ t
do this anymore or I’ ll say I can’ t. Confused
only about how long to stay, we’ ll meet and close it up.
She won’ t let me hold her. I won’ t care that my
eyes still work, that I can lift myself past staring.
Nothing from her will reach me after that.
I’ ll drive back to them, their low white T-shaped house
"They won't attack us here in the Indian graveyard."
I love that moment. And I love the moment
when I climb into your warm you-smelling
bed-dent after you've risen. And sunflowers,
once a whole field and I almost crashed,
the next year all pumpkins! Crop rotation,
I love you. Dividing words between syl-
lables! Dachshunds! What am I but the inter-
section of these loves? I spend 35 dollars on a CD
of some guy with 15 different guitars in his shack
with lots of tape delays and loops, a good buy!
You might as well take a razor
to your pecker as let a woman in your heart.
First they do the wash and then they kill you.
They flash their lights and teach your wallet to puke.
They bring it to you folded — if you see her
stepping between the coin laundry and your building
over the slushy street and watch the clothing steam,
you can’ t wait to open up the door when she puts
This is the life I wanted, and could never see.
For almost twenty years I thought that it was enough:
That real happiness was either unreal, or lost, or endless,
And that remembrance was as close to it as I could ever come.
And I believed that deep in the past, buried in my heart
Beyond the depth of sight, there was a kingdom of peace.
And so I never imagined that when peace would finally come
All my stories are about being left,
all yours about leaving. So we should have known.
Should have known to leave well enough alone;
we knew, and we didn’ t. You said let’ s put
our cards on the table, your card
was your body, the table my bed, where we didn’ t
get till 4 am, so tired from wanting
what we shouldn’ t that when we finally found our heads,
we’ d lost our minds. Love, I wanted to call you
so fast. But so slow you could taste each
letter licked into your particular and rose-like ear.
These lovers’ inklings which our loves enmesh,
Lost to the cunning and dimensional eye,
Though tenemented in the selves we see,
Not more perforce than azure to the sky,
Were necromancy-juggled to the flesh,
And startled from no daylight you or me.
You wept in your mother's arms
and I knew that from then on
I was to forget myself.
If the nose of the pig in the market of Firenze
has lost its matte patina, and shines, brassy,
even in the half light; if the mosaic saint
on the tiles of the Basilica floor is half gone,
worn by the gravity of solid soles, the passing
of piety; if the arms of Venus have reentered
the rubble, taken by time, her perennial lover,
mutilating even the memory of beauty;
The count of cappuccino,
the marquise of meringue,
all the little cantuccini...
and what was the song they sang?
Oh, the best of us is nothing
but a sweetening of the air,
a tryst between the teeth and tongue:
we meet and no one’ s there
though the café’ s always crowded
as society arrives
and light glints to and fro between
the eyes and rings and knives.
