Corners

There is a darkness 

every corner leaves

When I am without you

And a kind of light that 

blinded windows 

sometimes filter through

So when I wake up

Time is more limited than love

We suffer so many

Deaths because of shoulds 

Watching the sunlit dust through the shadows of the blinds on the morning after I should have said

How much I love

Your words that walk

Around the path of my heart

And let the true spins web

The spider veins of your

Fingers, splayed across your 

Face, your eyes a tiny hidden

Smile behind the forefinger

Or the middle finger that both

Offends and invites me

To an admittedly imagined 

Space that allows me to say

I love you, with a specific

Punctuation on the love

We might have been 

When we woke up this morning

And dreamed hello.

Even As I Am

There was an accident in my heart somewhere tonight,

The phased-out evergreen of promise

Lit up like firelight 

And somehow or another died on the way.

 

This could freak you out,

But there are only two letters that differentiate

Purified from putrefied,

And somehow I’m left with this 

Substance of grief 

That allows me to explain the thing. 

 

So, that’s there, between us,

And now I’m left 

Capturing the wine of embarrassment,

As if the fruit of your lips 

Might allow me to contain forgiveness,

And suddenly allow me to say

I’m not worthy of your love,

Even as 

I am,

I am.

But for the light they hold onto

We share breath

As we swallow

Our Sunday exhalations

And the comic book news we

Spill over coffee 

viewing the Sunrise under clouds 

that you insist

Are pelicans, when I almost

Certainly would have named them

Jim or Gord 

After certain poets I have known,

Not for the shapes we observe

But for the light they hold onto,

The reflection of your eyes in 

The wine stem glass

Between thumb and forefinger,

Eyes interlocked as our

little fingers twist

the shape of promise.