minor arcana
1.
—Jump into bed, laughing,
my longshanks. Forget the ginkgo trees.
Many wait
for that hour, but it’s not—for us, won’t be—fall.
Having ridden you,
let the gold land where it may.
2.
It’s not so much my days blur or I can’t remember certain
passages of time: you know how birds
mass on the ground, seething instinct and hunger, then
a sound, a scattering—black wing, black wing, black wing—
each with its own particular dark? It’s like that in a way.
I used to think one kind of intimacy was the only heal-all.
Can you see what grows along the lake? Moonlight
through haze, through water, through the dark—
3.
Sweeping the floor, I still feel the sweet hum
from before you left, the morning
we drifted from bed to the shower to the kitchen
and back again to watch Joanna Hogg
or Jane Campion, and it wasn’t the sex exactly
but its ordinary dailiness, I loved.
We came or we didn’t, nothing changed. What a marvel
to share my body, comfortable in it,
with you, my rushlight, who did not hurt me.
I lean the broom near a vase of white peonies.
Apricot jam. Less warm now, the bread.
