book of love

Like a stack of new &
favorite books on the
bedside shelf-- you sit at the
corner table--waiting for me.

I am late. Your tie, green and
orange against the darker
green of your shirt, is already loosened.
The beer before you-- sweating
in the thick heat of this bar
that could be anywhere.

In the next moments we will trade
the requisite adjectives
before moving on
to the verbs of the day, reporting on
objects and proper nouns we
hold in common.

The premise of our story:
we are human--
and the inevitable conclusion:
our brittle love, laced with
self-reference, is bound
inexorably to doubt.
Look! the page filled with I's.
A birthday sweater for you
in my favorite color.

Even so: in the next moments
we find our pacing, the unique syntax
of our separate voices
woven through with
the rhythm of us. In the
telling and re-telling we hear
those elements we can't supply.
We feel their gracious
weight and by them we
enter again a world we could not
have imagined for ourselves.