The Brooklyn Rail

I was happy then.
I am even happy now.
To remember those nights and mornings
I woke up, went to bed, capable
of such feeling.

It was not just you. I’m afraid
that I fabricated your light mood
flowing over the telephone,
throwing your hands in the air
without you truly.

Let this be the stanza
I allow myself love.
Not expecting an answer
but to have said the thing anyway.

In the middle of this decade,
we turned and walked

the same direction.
I held your hand and didn’t look

at the war you
thought would kill me.

The last good year
had a memory of cheeseburgers:

I ate them sitting on grass or rock
emptying paper of meaning.

You walked with me and then,
still, we could stop the fighting.

I had not yet closed death’s eyes with my lips.
Your mouth was not yet familiar.

When I see my death,
it is with you, hunched over vines
perfected over many summers.

We have asked these tomatoes to be ours,
early peonies in tight bulbs
readying their flames.

In this garden edged with winding paths
your face is forever a map
I read back to myself.

I have made for you, while I still could,
everything I wanted to,

                knowing that a time would come
                when the mouths of grass enclosing me
will house beetles making purple irises.

The bread’s cut open on the cutting board.
Your paintings are watching from the walls.
My notebook is open on the table
to this sentence
half-finished,

sweet air gone out
in one direction—

Two years passed when
there was a need but no will
for me. Now, times are tuned
to negligence. The fence

outside the window is covered
in limbs. There is wavering
over mercury, in the daily dips
and turns, when there is witching
every hour. Would I know

how to weave it in, that straw
in the bird’s nest? I am
a cardinal without direction.
I see each skeleton
as the point of winter.

The gleaming of the snow
in ice is the salt in my hair.
What I’ve given in: the rough
man’s stubble

cheek; a curtaining hand
across my face. If only my mouth
had more than black spit.
If only I was louder than

the scratch of my body
against the ground. I too
would like to speak.
I am too young to lie down.

What no one dares to say about love is that it was a choice—a beautiful, joyous choice, and
a choice against the difficulties of choosing. That is: this is the life I want to have. I choose
it with you. That is: you are in the life I choose. Which I can see as clearly as the willow
over there. The arch of the leaves into the grass. Summer brushing upward and the beetles
scuttling on berry leaves invisible from this distance. But soon enough being there. Soon
enough being close enough.

The purpose of the poet is to say
what is not so different. On these days
of death I walk around as
after all,
I’m still alive. For now

I roam in a garden of steps, two feet
chiming in paratactic melody,

and wait for sun to crown
the floor of our room.
To get to the dream
of the end

I garden by night.
Pea stalks pale blue
by moonlight.