My life is more than my life,
More than possession can define.

My life is your life:
Because of you I refer to things as ours.

Who would topple the pillars
Of his heart to be a lover
In the rubble?

Who would resign himself
To a fate of apple skins
And compost?

I went looking for overflowing dreams
And lost them in shadowless days.

Someone let the children roam
And forgot to call you back.

Praise me with the love in your eyes,
Clear, like water in a beaker,
So that I may measure myself against you.
For sound only makes the water bubble,
And words are the worst praise I’ve ever heard.

Quiet one, you whisper to me with a laden heart,
And your words break upon my ear
Like an atom of fog, dissolving into day.

I’ve fallen for a woman I’ve never seen;
That is, if eyes are the only source
That vision gives,
And the heart the body does not outlive.

O, your eyes, I’ve gone so long
Without their gaze, passed
So many nights beneath
Slate skies hewn from stoney
Evenings, witnessed
All the earth’s fury in an orange

My heart says,
“Give her all that you are and you will become
More than you have ever been.”

My mind says,
“Learn from the past.”

I am sorry that it is so hard
For me to leave you;
I fear that it is too easy
For you to leave me
And that I must linger
In your beauty like
A sunbather catching
The final strands of afternoon.

I want to spend my days with you,
purchase a lifetime’s worth of kisses,
and invest my poetry
in your womb