~ “This is the end for which we are together” ~

You are.
I am.
We are.
Conjugate love slowly backwards
is friendship lasts, let it be so. Once
I sat on your lap, listening to a man talk about the absence
of god – that blank space where heaven
could have been filled
with corporeal truth – the temptation of
slogging through wet fields, of eight hours
running a chainsaw, of the piles of sheets
to be washed guests leave behind –
unspeakable satisfaction – we would not
miss this for the world, or any other, saints not withstanding
the onslaught of doubt and a beautiful woman curls
like a child into your arms, turned
on by intellectual debate – I was her, and both –
your lover, drawing close
to your thoughts, your daughter, learning
from your warmth, the house holding us still
and softly, all held by night
spread around us in cricket song and a few stars
visible from the window where sleep
found me awake, each breath pouring in
your scent and Stravinsky faintly
on the radio, I slept without any faith
in morning, enough the intonation of your voice
praising evolution for lacking hierarchy, impartial
down to love is just something
we say we are you are I am