You're sad because you're sad.
　　It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.
　　Go see a shrink or take a pill,
　　or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll
　　you need to sleep.
　　
　　Well, all children are sad
　　but some get over it.
　　Count your blessings. Better than that,
　　buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.
　　Take up dancing to forget.
　　
　　Forget what?
　　Your sadness, your shadow,
　　whatever it was that was done to you
　　the day of the lawn party
　　when you came inside flushed with the sun,
　　your mouth sulky with sugar,
　　in your new dress with the ribbon
　　and the ice-cream smear,
　　and said to yourself in the bathroom,
　　I am not the favorite child.
　　
　　My darling, when it comes
　　right down to it
　　and the light fails and the fog rolls in
　　and you're trapped in your overturned body
　　under a blanket or burning car,
　　
　　and the red flame is seeping out of you
　　and igniting the tarmac beside you head
　　or else the floor, or else the pillow,
　　none of us is;
　　or else we all are.

　　Gone are the days
　　when you could walk on water.
　　When you could walk.
　　
　　The days are gone.
　　Only one day remains,
　　the one you're in.
　　
　　The memory is no friend.
　　It can only tell you
　　what you no longer have:
　　
　　a left hand you can use,
　　two feet that walk.
　　All the brain's gadgets.
　　
　　Hello, hello.
　　The one hand that still works
　　grips, won't let go.
　　
　　That is not a train.
　　There is no cricket.
　　Let's not panic.
　　
　　Let's talk about axes,
　　which kinds are good,
　　the many names of wood.
　　
　　This is how to build
　　a house, a boat, a tent.
　　No use; the toolbox
　　
　　refuses to reveal its verbs;
　　the rasp, the plane, the awl,
　　revert to sullen metal.
　　
　　Do you recognize anything? I said.
　　Anything familiar?
　　Yes, you said. The bed.
　　
　　Better to watch the stream
　　that flows across the floor
　　and is made of sunlight,
　　
　　the forest made of shadows;
　　better to watch the fireplace
　　which is now a beach.

　　Starspangled cowboy
　　sauntering out of the almost-
　　silly West, on your face
　　a porcelain grin,
　　tugging a papier-mache cactus
　　on wheels behind you with a string,
　　
　　you are innocent as a bathtub
　　full of bullets.
　　
　　Your righteous eyes, your laconic
　　trigger-fingers
　　people the streets with villains:
　　as you move, the air in front of you
　　blossoms with targets
　　
　　and you leave behind you a heroic
　　trail of desolation:
　　beer bottles
　　slaughtered by the side
　　of the road, bird-
　　skulls bleaching in the sunset.
　　
　　I ought to be watching
　　from behind a cliff or a cardboard storefront
　　when the shooting starts, hands clasped
　　in admiration,
　　
　　but I am elsewhere.
　　Then what about me
　　
　　what about the I
　　confronting you on that border
　　you are always trying to cross?
　　
　　I am the horizon
　　you ride towards, the thing you can never lasso
　　
　　I am also what surrounds you:
　　my brain
　　scattered with your
　　tincans, bones, empty shells,
　　the litter of your invasions.
　　
　　I am the space you desecrate
　　as you pass through.

　　All those times I was bored
　　out of my mind. Holding the log
　　while he sawed it. Holding
　　the string while he measured, boards,
　　distances between things, or pounded
　　stakes into the ground for rows and rows
　　of lettuces and beets, which I then (bored)
　　weeded. Or sat in the back
　　of the car, or sat still in boats,
　　sat, sat, while at the prow, stern, wheel
　　he drove, steered, paddled. It
　　wasn't even boredom, it was looking,
　　looking hard and up close at the small
　　details. Myopia. The worn gunwales,
　　the intricate twill of the seat
　　cover. The acid crumbs of loam, the granular
　　pink rock, its igneous veins, the sea-fans
　　of dry moss, the blackish and then the graying
　　bristles on the back of his neck.
　　Sometimes he would whistle, sometimes
　　I would. The boring rhythm of doing
　　things over and over, carrying
　　the wood, drying
　　the dishes. Such minutiae. It's what
　　the animals spend most of their time at,
　　ferrying the sand, grain by grain, from their tunnels,
　　shuffling the leaves in their burrows. He pointed
　　such things out, and I would look
　　at the whorled texture of his square finger, earth under
　　the nail. Why do I remember it as sunnier
　　all the time then, although it more often
　　rained, and more birdsong?
　　I could hardly wait to get
　　the hell out of there to
　　anywhere else. Perhaps though
　　boredom is happier. It is for dogs or
　　groundhogs. Now I wouldn't be bored.
　　Now I would know too much.
　　Now I would know.

　　Your lungs fill & spread themselves,
　　wings of pink blood, and your bones
　　empty themselves and become hollow.
　　When you breathe in you’ll lift like a balloon
　　and your heart is light too & huge,
　　beating with pure joy, pure helium.
　　The sun’s white winds blow through you,
　　there’s nothing above you,
　　you see the earth now as an oval jewel,
　　radiant & seablue with love.
　　It’s only in dreams you can do this.
　　Waking, your heart is a shaken fist,
　　a fine dust clogs the air you breathe in;
　　the sun’s a hot copper weight pressing straight
　　down on the think pink rind of your skull.
　　It’s always the moment just before gunshot.
　　You try & try to rise but you cannot.

　　Marriage is not
　　a house or even a tent
　　
　　it is before that, and colder:
　　
　　The edge of the forest, the edge
　　of the desert
　　the unpainted stairs
　　at the back where we squat
　　outside, eating popcorn
　　
　　where painfully and with wonder
　　at having survived even
　　this far
　　
　　we are learning to make fire

　　The world is full of women
　　who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
　　if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
　　Get some self-respect
　　and a day job.
　　Right. And minimum wage,
　　and varicose veins, just standing
　　in one place for eight hours
　　behind a glass counter
　　bundled up to the neck, instead of
　　naked as a meat sandwich.
　　Selling gloves, or something.
　　Instead of what I do sell.
　　You have to have talent
　　to peddle a thing so nebulous
　　and without material form.
　　Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way
　　you cut it, but I've a choice
　　of how, and I'll take the money.
　　
　　I do give value.
　　Like preachers, I sell vision,
　　like perfume ads, desire
　　or its facsimile. Like jokes
　　or war, it's all in the timing.
　　I sell men back their worse suspicions:
　　that everything's for sale,
　　and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see
　　a chain-saw murder just before it happens,
　　when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple
　　are still connected.
　　Such hatred leaps in them,
　　my beery worshippers! That, or a bleary
　　hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads
　　and upturned eyes, imploring
　　but ready to snap at my ankles,
　　I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge
　　to step on ants. I keep the beat,
　　and dance for them because
　　they can't. The music smells like foxes,
　　crisp as heated metal
　　searing the nostrils
　　or humid as August, hazy and languorous
　　as a looted city the day after,
　　when all the rape's been done
　　already, and the killing,
　　and the survivors wander around
　　looking for garbage
　　to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.
　　Speaking of which, it's the smiling
　　tires me out the most.
　　This, and the pretence
　　that I can't hear them.
　　And I can't, because I'm after all
　　a foreigner to them.
　　The speech here is all warty gutturals,
　　obvious as a slab of ham,
　　but I come from the province of the gods
　　where meanings are lilting and oblique.
　　I don't let on to everyone,
　　but lean close, and I'll whisper:
　　My mother was raped by a holy swan.
　　You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.
　　That's what we tell all the husbands.
　　There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.
　　
　　Not that anyone here
　　but you would understand.
　　The rest of them would like to watch me
　　and feel nothing. Reduce me to components
　　as in a clock factory or abattoir.
　　Crush out the mystery.
　　Wall me up alive
　　in my own body.
　　They'd like to see through me,
　　but nothing is more opaque
　　than absolute transparency.
　　Look--my feet don't hit the marble!
　　Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,
　　I hover six inches in the air
　　in my blazing swan-egg of light.
　　You think I'm not a goddess?
　　Try me.
　　This is a torch song.
　　Touch me and you'll burn.

　　In the secular night you wander around
　　alone in your house. It's two-thirty.
　　Everyone has deserted you,
　　or this is your story;
　　you remember it from being sixteen,
　　when the others were out somewhere, having a good time,
　　or so you suspected,
　　and you had to baby-sit.
　　You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream
　　and filled up the glass with grapejuice
　　and ginger ale, and put on Glenn Miller
　　with his big-band sound,
　　and lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up the chimney,
　　and cried for a while because you were not dancing,
　　and then danced, by yourself, your mouth circled with purple.
　　
　　Now, forty years later, things have changed,
　　and it's baby lima beans.
　　It's necessary to reserve a secret vice.
　　This is what comes from forgetting to eat
　　at the stated mealtimes. You simmer them carefully,
　　drain, add cream and pepper,
　　and amble up and down the stairs,
　　scooping them up with your fingers right out of the bowl,
　　talking to yourself out loud.
　　You'd be surprised if you got an answer,
　　but that part will come later.
　　
　　There is so much silence between the words,
　　you say. You say, The sensed absence
　　of God and the sensed presence
　　amount to much the same thing,
　　only in reverse.
　　You say, I have too much white clothing.
　　You start to hum.
　　Several hundred years ago
　　this could have been mysticism
　　or heresy. It isn't now.
　　Outside there are sirens.
　　Someone's been run over.
　　The century grinds on.

　　Love is not a profession
　　genteel or otherwise
　　
　　sex is not dentistry
　　the slick filling of aches and cavities
　　
　　you are not my doctor
　　you are not my cure,
　　
　　nobody has that
　　power, you are merely a fellow/traveller
　　
　　Give up this medical concern,
　　buttoned, attentive,
　　
　　permit yourself anger
　　and permit me mine
　　
　　which needs neither
　　your approval nor your suprise
　　
　　which does not need to be made legal
　　which is not against a disease
　　
　　but agaist you,
　　which does not need to be understood
　　
　　or washed or cauterized,
　　which needs instead
　　
　　to be said and said.
　　Permit me the present tense.

　　More and more frequently the edges
　　of me dissolve and I become
　　a wish to assimilate the world, including
　　you, if possible through the skin
　　like a cool plant's tricks with oxygen
　　and live by a harmless green burning.
　　
　　I would not consume
　　you or ever
　　finish, you would still be there
　　surrounding me, complete
　　as the air.
　　
　　Unfortunately I don't have leaves.
　　Instead I have eyes
　　and teeth and other non-green
　　things which rule out osmosis.
　　
　　So be careful, I mean it,
　　I give you fair warning:
　　
　　This kind of hunger draws
　　everything into its own
　　space; nor can we
　　talk it all over, have a calm
　　rational discussion.
　　
　　There is no reason for this, only
　　a starved dog's logic about bones.

　　In the burned house I am eating breakfast.
　　You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast,
　　yet here I am.
　　
　　The spoon which was melted scrapes against
　　the bowl which was melted also.
　　No one else is around.
　　
　　Where have they gone to, brother and sister,
　　mother and father? Off along the shore,
　　perhaps. Their clothes are still on the hangers,
　　
　　their dishes piled beside the sink,
　　which is beside the woodstove
　　with its grate and sooty kettle,
　　
　　every detail clear,
　　tin cup and rippled mirror.
　　The day is bright and songless,
　　
　　the lake is blue, the forest watchful.
　　In the east a bank of cloud
　　rises up silently like dark bread.
　　
　　I can see the swirls in the oilcloth,
　　I can see the flaws in the glass,
　　those flares where the sun hits them.
　　
　　I can't see my own arms and legs
　　or know if this is a trap or blessing,
　　finding myself back here, where everything
　　
　　in this house has long been over,
　　kettle and mirror, spoon and bowl,
　　including my own body,
　　
　　including the body I had then,
　　including the body I have now
　　as I sit at this morning table, alone and happy,
　　
　　bare child's feet on the scorched floorboards
　　(I can almost see)
　　in my burning clothes, the thin green shorts
　　
　　and grubby yellow T-shirt
　　holding my cindery, non-existent,
　　radiant flesh. Incandescent.

　　There is nothing to be afraid of,
　　it is only the wind
　　changing to the east, it is only
　　your father the thunder
　　your mother the rain
　　
　　In this country of water
　　with its beige moon damp as a mushroom,
　　its drowned stumps and long birds
　　that swim, where the moss grows
　　on all sides of the trees
　　and your shadow is not your shadow
　　but your reflection,
　　
　　your true parents disappear
　　when the curtain covers your door.
　　We are the others,
　　the ones from under the lake
　　who stand silently beside your bed
　　with our heads of darkness.
　　We have come to cover you
　　with red wool,
　　with our tears and distant whipers.
　　
　　You rock in the rain's arms
　　the chilly ark of your sleep,
　　while we wait, your night
　　father and mother
　　with our cold hands and dead flashlight,
　　knowing we are only
　　the wavering shadows thrown
　　by one candle, in this echo
　　you will hear twenty years later.

　　I'm thinking about you. What else can I say?
　　The palm trees on the reverse
　　are a delusion; so is the pink sand.
　　What we have are the usual
　　fractured coke bottles and the smell
　　of backed-up drains, too sweet,
　　like a mango on the verge
　　of rot, which we have also.
　　The air clear sweat, mosquitoes
　　& their tracks; birds & elusive.
　　
　　Time comes in waves here, a sickness, one
　　day after the other rolling on;
　　I move up, it's called
　　awake, then down into the uneasy
　　nights but never
　　forward. The roosters crow
　　for hours before dawn, and a prodded
　　child howls & howls
　　on the pocked road to school.
　　In the hold with the baggage
　　there are two prisoners,
　　their heads shaved by bayonets, & ten crates
　　of queasy chicks. Each spring
　　there's race of cripples, from the store
　　to the church. This is the sort of junk
　　I carry with me; and a clipping
　　about democracy from the local paper.
　　
　　Outside the window
　　they're building the damn hotel,
　　nail by nail, someone's
　　crumbling dream. A universe that includes you
　　can't be all bad, but
　　does it? At this distance
　　you're a mirage, a glossy image
　　fixed in the posture
　　of the last time I saw you.
　　Turn you over, there's the place
　　for the address. Wish you were
　　here. Love comes
　　in waves like the ocean, a sickness which goes on
　　& on, a hollow cave
　　in the head, filling & pounding, a kicked ear.

　　What should we have taken
　　with us? We never could decide
　　on that; or what to wear,
　　or at what time of
　　year we should make the journey
　　
　　So here we are in thin
　　raincoats and rubber boots
　　
　　On the disastrous ice, the wind rising
　　
　　Nothing in our pockets
　　
　　But a pencil stub, two oranges
　　Four Toronto streetcar tickets
　　
　　and an elastic band holding a bundle
　　of small white filing cards
　　printed with important facts.

　　He was the sort of man
　　who wouldn't hurt a fly.
　　Many flies are now alive
　　while he is not.
　　He was not my patron.
　　He preferred full granaries, I battle.
　　My roar meant slaughter.
　　Yet here we are together
　　in the same museum.
　　That's not what I see, though, the fitful
　　crowds of staring children
　　learning the lesson of multi-
　　cultural obliteration, sic transit
　　and so on.
　　
　　I see the temple where I was born
　　or built, where I held power.
　　I see the desert beyond,
　　where the hot conical tombs, that look
　　from a distance, frankly, like dunces' hats,
　　hide my jokes: the dried-out flesh
　　and bones, the wooden boats
　　in which the dead sail endlessly
　　in no direction.
　　
　　What did you expect from gods
　　with animal heads?
　　Though come to think of it
　　the ones made later, who were fully human
　　were not such good news either.
　　Favour me and give me riches,
　　destroy my enemies.
　　That seems to be the gist.
　　Oh yes: And save me from death.
　　In return we're given blood
　　and bread, flowers and prayer,
　　and lip service.
　　
　　Maybe there's something in all of this
　　I missed. But if it's selfless
　　love you're looking for,
　　you've got the wrong goddess.
　　
　　I just sit where I'm put, composed
　　of stone and wishful thinking:
　　that the deity who kills for pleasure
　　will also heal,
　　that in the midst of your nightmare,
　　the final one, a kind lion
　　will come with bandages in her mouth
　　and the soft body of a woman,
　　and lick you clean of fever,
　　and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neck
　　and caress you into darkness and paradise.

　　This is the one song everyone
　　would like to learn: the song
　　that is irresistible:
　　
　　the song that forces men
　　to leap overboard in squadrons
　　even though they see beached skulls
　　
　　the song nobody knows
　　because anyone who had heard it
　　is dead, and the others can’t remember.
　　Shall I tell you the secret
　　and if I do, will you get me
　　out of this bird suit?
　　I don’t enjoy it here
　　squatting on this island
　　looking picturesque and mythical
　　with these two feathery maniacs,
　　I don’t enjoy singing
　　this trio, fatal and valuable.
　　
　　I will tell the secret to you,
　　to you, only to you.
　　Come closer. This song
　　
　　is a cry for help: Help me!
　　Only you, only you can,
　　you are unique
　　
　　at last. Alas
　　it is a boring song
　　but it works every time.

　　My daughter plays on the floor
　　with plastic letters,
　　red, blue & hard yellow,
　　learning how to spell,
　　spelling,
　　how to make spells.
　　
　　I wonder how many women
　　denied themselves daughters,
　　closed themselves in rooms,
　　drew the curtains
　　so they could mainline words.
　　
　　A child is not a poem,
　　a poem is not a child.
　　there is no either/or.
　　However.
　　
　　I return to the story
　　of the woman caught in the war
　　& in labour, her thighs tied
　　together by the enemy
　　so she could not give birth.
　　
　　Ancestress: the burning witch,
　　her mouth covered by leather
　　to strangle words.
　　
　　A word after a word
　　after a word is power.
　　
　　At the point where language falls away
　　from the hot bones, at the point
　　where the rock breaks open and darkness
　　flows out of it like blood, at
　　the melting point of granite
　　when the bones know
　　they are hollow & the word
　　splits & doubles & speaks
　　the truth & the body
　　itself becomes a mouth.
　　
　　This is a metaphor.
　　
　　How do you learn to spell?
　　Blood, sky & the sun,
　　your own name first,
　　your first naming, your first name,
　　your first word.

　　Cruising these residential Sunday
　　streets in dry August sunlight:
　　what offends us is
　　the sanities:
　　the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
　　sanitary trees, assert
　　levelness of surface like a rebuke
　　to the dent in our car door.
　　No shouting here, or
　　shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
　　than the rational whine of a power mower
　　cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.
　　
　　But though the driveways neatly
　　sidestep hysteria
　　by being even, the roofs all display
　　the same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,
　　certain things:
　　the smell of spilled oil a faint
　　sickness lingering in the garages,
　　a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise,
　　a plastic hose poised in a vicious
　　coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows
　　
　　give momentary access to
　　the landscape behind or under
　　the future cracks in the plaster
　　
　　when the houses, capsized, will slide
　　obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers
　　that right now nobody notices.
　　
　　That is where the City Planners
　　with the insane faces of political conspirators
　　are scattered over unsurveyed
　　territories, concealed from each other,
　　each in his own private blizzard;
　　
　　guessing directions, they sketch
　　transitory lines rigid as wooden borders
　　on a wall in the white vanishing air
　　
　　tracing the panic of suburb
　　order in a bland madness of snows

　　This is the lair of the landlady
　　
　　She is
　　a raw voice
　　loose in the rooms beneath me.
　　
　　the continuous henyard
　　squabble going on below
　　thought in this house like
　　the bicker of blood through the head.
　　
　　She is everywhere, intrusive as the smells
　　that bulge in under my doorsill;
　　she presides over my
　　meagre eating, generates
　　the light for eyestrain.
　　
　　From her I rent my time:
　　she slams
　　my days like doors.
　　Nothing is mine.
　　
　　and when I dream images
　　of daring escapes through the snow
　　I find myself walking
　　always over a vast face
　　which is the land-
　　lady's, and wake up shouting.
　　
　　She is a bulk, a knot
　　swollen in a space. Though I have tried
　　to find some way around
　　her, my senses
　　are cluttered by perception
　　and can't see through her.
　　
　　She stands there, a raucous fact
　　blocking my way:
　　immutable, a slab
　　of what is real.
　　
　　solid as bacon.

　　The moment when, after many years
　　of hard work and a long voyage
　　you stand in the centre of your room,
　　house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
　　knowing at last how you got there,
　　and say, I own this,
　　
　　is the same moment when the trees unloose
　　their soft arms from around you,
　　the birds take back their language,
　　the cliffs fissure and collapse,
　　the air moves back from you like a wave
　　and you can't breathe.
　　
　　No, they whisper. You own nothing.
　　You were a visitor, time after time
　　climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
　　We never belonged to you.
　　You never found us.
　　It was always the other way round.

　　The rest of us watch from beyond the fence
　　as the woman moves with her jagged stride
　　into her pain as if into a slow race.
　　We see her body in motion
　　but hear no sounds, or we hear
　　sounds but no language; or we know
　　it is not a language we know
　　yet. We can see her clearly
　　but for her it is running in black smoke.
　　The cluster of cells in her swelling
　　like porridge boiling, and bursting,
　　like grapes, we think. Or we think of
　　explosions in mud; but we know nothing.
　　All around us the trees
　　and the grasses light up with forgiveness,
　　so green and at this time
　　of the year healthy.
　　We would like to call something
　　out to her. Some form of cheering.
　　There is pain but no arrival at anything.

　　My shadow said to me:
　　what is the matter
　　
　　Isn't the moon warm
　　enough for you
　　why do you need
　　the blanket of another body
　　
　　Whose kiss is moss
　　
　　Around the picnic tables
　　The bright pink hands held sandwiches
　　crumbled by distance. Flies crawl
　　over the sweet instant
　　
　　You know what is in these blankets
　　
　　The trees outside are bending with
　　children shooting guns. Leave
　　them alone. They are playing
　　games of their own.
　　
　　I give water, I give clean crusts
　　
　　Aren't there enough words
　　flowing in your veins
　　to keep you going.

　　It was taken some time ago
　　At first it seems to be
　　a smeared
　　print: blurred lines and grey flecks
　　blended with the paper;
　　
　　then, as you scan
　　it, you can see something in the left-hand corner
　　a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
　　(balsam or spruce) emerging
　　and, to the right, halfway up
　　what ought to be a gentle
　　slope, a small frame house.
　　
　　In the background there is a lake,
　　and beyond that, some low hills.
　　
　　(The photograph was taken
　　the day after I drowned.
　　
　　I am in the lake, in the center
　　of the picture, just under the surface.
　　
　　It is difficult to say where
　　precisely, or to say
　　how large or how small I am:
　　the effect of water
　　on light is a distortion.
　　
　　but if you look long enough
　　eventually
　　you will see me.)

我愿意看你睡觉
这也许从没发生
我愿意看你
睡觉。我愿意睡觉
和你，进入
你的睡眠当它那光滑幽黑的波浪
翻卷在我的头上

我愿意和你穿过那片透亮的
摇曳着蓝绿枝叶的树林
带着湿漉漉的太阳和三个月亮
走向你必须下去的山洞
走向你最强烈的畏惧

我愿意给你那银色的
树枝，这小小的白花，一个
将庇护你的字
从你忧虑的梦的中心，从忧虑的
中心。我愿意跟随
你踏上那长长的阶梯
再一次并变成
载你归来的船儿
精心地，一朵火焰
在两只捧着的手中
你的身体躺在
我的身边，而你进入它
轻柔的就像吸进一口空气

我愿意是那空气
在你的身体里仅仅
呆一会儿。我愿意是空气不被注意
又那样必需。

1981

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and as you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.