You shall receive:

a walk in a rainstorm along cursive rails, skipping over ties black with grease,

knife edged feathers shed by Canada geese, an untrodden meadow of wildflowers in some high country,

and from there a view of a lake, whose waters crinkle like the corners of your laughing eyes,

my week old beard like fine sandpaper polishing the sheen of your morning scent, music in smoky dives, bargaining in a babel

of foreign souks, warm bread and cold wine, in a cabin propped up with books, the stage for us to converse in Shakespeare,

an occasional quarrel too with banging doors for rifle shots, and a narrow bed, in which we are forced to lie on our sides to fit

like two mirrors, in which this ceaseless turning towards you in desire, need, and love, and resultant poems without endings including this one…

The avenues are splattered with the offerings of trees, where after a season of sweats, cold air is sluicing through. I wait at a ruby red traffic light, listening to the hum of cars and voices, and think of all the crossings I (will) undertake: trains to work and assignations, a bier to burning, rooms in shade to couple with lovers, naves to walk on bruised knees, ruins to be in a state of longing, and snows to obscure Adrienne's incarnadine again.

When he takes out a crumpled jacket And shakes the dust off its back by trashing it against a wall, he hears The sound of it, the mountain river By whose shore he had picked up Three pebbles of rounded shale.

Two he gave to Adrienne for safe Keeping - his stone burnt, hers' snow. The third remained here forgotten, Indeterminate in color, like the love child They planned to have but now will not.