This Late
for John
Swear, I say, you’re not in my head,
As you go on about molecules of water,
Snowmelt and rain, how, shed, they seep,
Steep for years underground. Like us,
You venture, guessing I’ll question
Any metaphor you offer for love at our age.
Still, you insist it’s tidal, maybe inevitable,
That I’ve traveled toward you, and, riverine,
You’ve taken me in, drawing me on
Around every sinuous bend as we meander
Toward a briny mouth I can’t stop imagining.
~
When at last we lay together, and after
You’d fallen asleep, I studied your face
As I had for hours in the unearthly light
Of a darkroom when we were young.
Printing and reprinting your image
Until I never forgot it. Alchemy, I thought,
It was like that, the way your features
Stole into sight, much as after a long absence
Someone we’ve known once may reappear.
It can be fifty years. A half-century
And you’re beside me now. In my shadow, light.
~
We made mistakes with others, first wife, first
And second husbands we hurt or were wounded by.
So. Aren’t we fools to promise? Even though
Forever is shorter than it’s ever been.
A final dash of spice, a splash of something sweet,
No more than a soupçon, the years we have left to taste.
Still. Suspicion. They’re so close: the hidden rhymes
I hear inside the words we say out loud. Love
[Shove] Trust [Thrust]. One singing against the next
Like the leak in my house that will not stop dripping
Want behind a wall. Then won’t.
~
I’ve been accused of overthinking, and it’s true
Sometimes I see myself in the deliberate heron
That wades ever so slowly toward what it hungers for.
Otherwise, they’re skittish birds. Always quick to lift off,
S their necks in flight I thought until the day
We saw one with a seeping wound just inches
From the path that we were on. Transfixed,
The suffering heron locked its gaze upon another
Great Blue keeping vigil in the reeds.
It was some dark well we were looking into then.
A tableau in which we saw our future selves.
~
Despite it, love. In defiance of.
Along the south rim of the canyon we’ve come to
In winter, we’re following The Trail of Time,
Each step marking a million years.
The Proterozoic era. Paleozoic. Eons
To remind us how young we are. You laugh,
Taking my hand as the winding Colorado
Disappears in snow. Never mind,
You tell me, turning back to the trail
And a sign that says, You are here.
For the time being all I need to know.