So this is love. When it slows
the rain touches everyone on their way home.
Whatever was promised of pleasure
costs the body more than it has.
Perhaps they were right putting love into books…
to look at the sky without asking a question,
to look at the sea and know you won’t drown today.
Despite all our work, even the worst of life
has a place in memory. And the fixed hours
between two and five before evening
are the aimless future with someone
who cannot stay new. August returns us
to a gap in history where our errors
find the invention of a kinder regret.
Almost possible: to believe these days
will change more than us but the past too.
Which is blue and without end.
A long drive toward a remembered place.
A secret left on a beach. Underwater
where the voices of summer are tones of speech,
requiring less of the mind. The familiar creaks
in the old floorboards. Glasses left out in the storm.
Our handwritten lists with every illegible worry
and more. The person you think of
despite their cruelty. The sun and its cruelty.
How it’s kept its distance and kept us alive.
Not needing to know anything about what we do
with the rest of desire.
~ from love and other poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2021)
