Listening

 

I haven’t seen you for some time, though you’ve been

all around me everywhere, in the needle thin

alleys, on Juliet balconies in spring –

not in eggshell numbers, nor pixels nor a pin.

 

Flesh smells and blood’s awkward outside a vein.

No one knows why it stops. Nor exactly when.

We only know it will. Without a question.

It too will pass. Never come this way again.

 

I’ll yank my senses free and come hold you close

and breathe you in, the rankness of flesh and rose,

purple orchid heart, the exhaust off the roads.

And we’ll walk off someplace where no one goes.

 

I’ll listen with my entire body to you,

the peace of your quiet, velvet voice all day through.