from Euphoria

                                                       1

Dear Regret, my leaning this morning, my leather foot, want of stone, my age

Old, burnished and bruised, my hair lingering, my hand caked, spongy as

November my dear Relentless, my dear Aging, your voice tinny, dissonant

As Stein shot through decades of war and Fortrel, cocktails on the hour,  

Zeppelins over Piccadilly, bombing blindly in the fog. Dear Skin, dear Tobacco

Mouth my refusal, my merely geographic, my fibrous strings for you: your

Abundant wit, your lack of shadow and still joy nosing the air. Each moment

Stretches toward you, your dry feet: I carried them, pumiced and peppery

Laid them where regret is a biscuit thing to lean upon and sweeten,

My hour of you, my cursive thoughts, a pulpit beating under these ribs.

                                                       2

Dear Time, you swallowed us whole, swallowed us lovely, sharp as bones

Crimping sadly under foot my benign, my flotsam and crabs thin as leaves

Your smoothing, your sinking in. Mornings or mooring, or wallowing

Jericho: tapioca air indolent. I am still there, supple and driftwood, you lovely,

You loved me, your memory dark and west, thoughts like tugboats stitching

The horizon, you pulling me, my pudding, my thin crustacean, sideways

In the late afternoon, your gaze, having so soon forgotten the sharpness

Of mornings, the bite of your look serrating the hour: my treasures, all

Of them, for the pleasure of that slice once more, of our dangling,

You and me, the lot of us in some car, driving some hour, mapless.

                                                       3

Under a spiderweb, a tire, slouched: flat, sad-lipped, I think of Newton

Of the original apple, all of these clones since, all of these scentless

Descents. I shake my glass, shake again, melted suffixes tinkling; observe

All things natural: foliage unfurling like old bills, wryly betraying

Your habits, like the dog who digs and rubs, the dog who whines, who

Paws and circles, you trace. Why is pain so much better than nothing? Or

The mark of it more understandable? Why is saying nothing so much better?

Your one-liner like blossoms, uplifting, your currents strap me to air, yes

I guess there is a little texture up here, and oxygen pure as baby’s toes

Which if I recall, are sweet as kernels of corn, if I recall so long ago.

                                                       4

To arrive is practice, conversation or conversion, a story over a field

My Sweet, of concrete or whispering, furrows of a path no longer, not

Sure, was there, and snow combed in curlicues and dog ears a zigzag

Through January. Sure you are witty, but are you any less romantic?

In my remembering, I have undone all my beliefs, it is a luxury to lay

Unencumbered here, or there, the bones flexed with tendons, the

Spine like a seahorse, the heart far from a cliche unless beating is

Innocent, though innocence is not as supple as you think, nor as flexible,

Nor as perfumed, nor convenient, or even clean: between things regret

Gathers force. I remember that day: it was cold and the coffee tepid.

                                                       5

The small red balloons like thumbprints, waves green as the brush of

Cedar, the wind lapping your hoodie, blind strings tap the air, camera

Bobbing like a dog’s tail. Such lightness, the dog heading off, all

The dogs of English Bay angling off-leash. I would follow backward,

Lay old maps on your white sheets, so sincere, I am in earnest for you:

We won’t regret having not yet knit our acrid puns and jaded barbs, nor

Having the wind slip in under our belt loops, though I gently refuse

Gor-Tex, and you bet I will not concede the game. Those small red

Balloons like tulips in your eyes specs of amber, an amulet, an avatar,

My thoughts of you fully indexed, ready to step into.