Your voice cracking Was a glass bangle breaking.

…

In the distance, a train is whistling. Gunfire, rails are rattling.

As a coin is flattened into a pendant, Time is pressed into remembering.

In the garden, the earth is waiting. How to thirst, is it’s teaching.

…

Soon the cold cranes will arrive, Rains will arrive, the guest will arrive.

Sweep the house, paint the doorways, Beat the drums, holler. Let him hear And see you dancing to the innermost music.

…

They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old. – W.B. Yeats

Your sounds however, have died, and I hear nothing, Standing here, amidst bare beeches aglow is dawn’s fire.

We must have whispered our questions And declarations for only my protestations ring clear.

What was that you desired most and what was that I did not possess? As ice cold glasses mist over,

Many winters have obscured your image. And we now awaken In separate cities, in separate beds, next to still separated bodies.

Then what is that of you, that which even my heart forgot, My hot blood, rustling and snaking in the carpet of rusting beech Leaves, hungers and hunts this morning?

He wants to tell the truth. But the truth refuses to undress, Refuses to go to bed with him.

She looks at him. He doesn’t know how To talk into her.

Mordant desire twists Around his spine, ivy Which can kill an oak.

He wants hear Through his skin. Only the wind knocks.

--

There are only two walls To this room, distance And time, which is also distance.

Sometimes he stares at that point Where perspective begins, hard. Past is a caved in subway station.

--

Each of you heft your respective backpacks And wriggle your shoulders as if what Has passed between you doesn’t yet fit.

--

A day goes spinning, a discarded hoop Which I race through the dusty lane Till I reach your door and yell your name.

--

To remember the first time You met someone, Tattoo the date on your skin. For time erases the windscreen Of memory, its steady arm Swinging in the rain

There are many ways To measure time.

The first one I have known Is between meeting And parting. Another is between Remembering and forgetting Both the meeting and the parting.

Tonight, you gave me a third, This gasping between laughing!