When did one season begin and another end?
What branched like a nerve? What burrowed
like a heart? Can we say love?
What will the yellowing tree bear?
Between each rib, cartilage and blood.
Beneath this cage of bone, four chambers.
Inside each chamber, you, throbbing,
compelling the blood and air.
There is a body I hold like a sound,
a name my mind cradles like a pit
on the tongue. But where is the flesh?
And how will it weigh my palm?
If we can say love, here is the ocean.
Here the white bird of your heart.
Here the hard sun and sand. Here a town
closed for the season, a man wearing
all his clothes, asleep on the beach.
We say mountain. We say nothing.
We make a cross on the sand. We discover
the wonder of perpendicularity.