Look, love – how we have danced

so close these years – how slowly

we began, in March rain circling

one another with our eyes. I met you first

in observation, your rhythm cutting deep into

my own, but never lingering, changing – a caress,

and gone. Into summer heat

drying out meadows, each grass reflecting

sunlight a little differently back to the sky. Doors

and windows opened to breeze and flies, ripening

fruit and the neighbor’s music. My hands opened

around you, around your face. Though winter

approached again, I could not close them – kept

fumbling for your hand

through increasing distance, swallowed you and went

silent, so I could not follow

your voice – affection withdrew, muffled,

waited for a kinder season to bring

us back to a room shaped like your

heart (deep faceted, neither circular,

nor square) a room you laugh at for its fullness,

its stacks of things near falling, but I curl myself

on the bed – in the center where your pulse is – one channel

of blood – even as you stand in the doorway, looking

across my outstretched limbs with that smile leading from

tenderness towards fierce desire, breaking

at the center of my own breath, the inhalation and

exhalation of the land, holding us, holding up the moon

visible through the window. This room – soft around the edges,

alarm clock glowing red when you lie down beside me, turn out

the light – with hands like yours, presses me

down into the body we are

together – all of us – storage boxes, stars,

folded clothing, sheets and timber, you and

I – blending into sleep, darkness where I whisper, you find me.