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.
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.
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.
