I have been temperate always,
But I am like to be very drunk
With your coming.
There have been times
I feared to walk down the street
Lest I should reel with the wine of you,
And jerk against my neighbours
As they go by.
I am parched now, and my tongue is horrible in my mouth,
But my brain is noisy
With the clash and gurgle of filling wine-cups.

When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread,
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,
But I am completely nourished.

Leaving

My eye teared,
lump in throat—
I was going
away from here

and everything that
had come with me
first was waiting
again to be taken.

All the times
I’d looked, held,
handled that or this
reminded me

no fairness, justice,
in life, not
that can stand
with those abandoned.

I’ll win the way
I always do
by being gone
when they come.

When they look, they’ll see
nothing of me
and where I am
they’ll not know.

This, I thought, is my way
and right or wrong
it’s me. Being dead, then,
I’ll have won completely.

In that strange light,
garish like wet blood,

I had no expectations
or hopes, nothing any more

one shouts at life to wake it up,
be nice to us—simply scared

you’d be hurt, were already
changed. I was, your head

out, looked— I want each
day for you, each single day

for you, give them
as I can to you.

I wanted approval,
carrying with me
things of my mother’s
beyond their use to me—

worn-out clock
her small green lock box,
father’s engraved brass plate
for printing calling cards—

such size of her still
calls out to me
with that silently
expressive will.

My father has forgotten me
in the excitement of dying.
Like a child who will not eat,
he takes no notice of anything.

I sit on the edge of his bed
while the living circle us
like so many tree stumps.

Once, for the smallest
fraction of an instant, I thought
he was alive in the present again;
then he looked at me
as a blind man stares
straight into the sun, since
whatever it could do to him
is done already.

Then his flushed face
turned away from the contract.

I’m going to live without you
as I learned once
to live without my mother.
You think I don’t remember that?
I’ve spent my whole life trying to remember.

Now, after so much solitude,
death doesn’t frighten me,
not yours, not mine either.
And those words, the last time,
have no power over me. I know
intense love always leads to mourning.

For once, your body doesn’t frighten me.
From time to time, I run my hand over your face
lightly, like a dustcloth.
What can shock me now? I feel
no coldness that can’t be explained.
Against your cheek, my hand is warm
and full of tenderness.

Lord, you may not recognize me
speaking for someone else.
I have a son. He is
so little, so ignorant.
He likes to stand
at the screen door, calling
oggie, oggie, entering
language, and sometimes
a dog will stop and come up
the walk, perhaps
accidently. May he believe
this is not an accident?
At the screen
welcoming each beast
in love’s name, Your emissary.

Neither Cowboy nor Max had ever seen
a crow’s egg because they believed
nothing so frightening and black could
come from something so fragile. It
was the only belief they shared. And
to Cowboy it was of little consequence.
But it frightened him. This sharing.
It was like a new saddle. On an old horse
he believed in. Because he had just bought both.