Misery et cetera
Likely as the quilt of leaves
Above this confused congruence of
Sentience
If there were only one path leading away
From the small iron shed
Beside the glass summerhouse where
She sleeps like the broken string of a lute
Like the last in a series of broken
Strings
I might follow that path to the edge
Of the white lake the radical lake rising
All by itself into the air
Where a single cloud descended like a hand
Once while we sat watching
As the moon paced the hard horizon like a sentry
Whose borders had only recently begun
To assemble
Whose latitudes resemble a doubled thread
Whose path remains a sentence on the sleepy tongue
& in that mist of intersection
Lake cloud & moon combining in the slash
Of the instant
I had only the physical to remember you by
Only the heat of your breath along my shoulder
Only the lit web of wet hair streaking
Our faces like the veins of
No other night
No other
Now in the regrettable glare of the mind
Which worships our impermanence
The way in which you have become the she asleep
In the summerhouse
where the glass walls
Hold only the gold of the day’s light
As if you never had any body I knew at all