Sometimes, it is a dream:
the robin’s slick song
paring back the morning—
it is not morning, or, it is not like how morning comes,
as if water from a glass
tipped over, but it is how
I loved you, gradually
and then all at once.
Cherry plum trees
settling into their blush;
hills of sodden wheat;
this golden field
I can’t stop returning to:
you, naked, inching towards me,
an adaptation of tenderness
and force—
brief lights
that fall gently
from your hands.
If only the landscape were that simple:
pollen in the air, each breath
leaving the mouth like a man
pushed from a building—
no, no. He leapt. To what do I owe your beauty
to which I never fully required,
and yet, while beneath you, is what bloomed.
This is how I began: as dirt
and desire, or simply a small river,
aimless,
but moving—
to where?