Out of fiery contacts . . . 

Rushing auras of steel 

Touching and whirled apart . . . 

Out of the charged phallases 

Of iron leaping 

Female and male,

  Complete, indivisible, one,

  Fused into light. 

“...because in the dying world it was set burning.”

                                                            —Galway Kinnell

We are not making love but

all night long we hug each other. 

Your face under my chin is two brown

thoughts with no right name, but opens to

eyes when my beard is brushing you.

The last line of the album playing

is Joan Armatrading’s existential stuff, 

we had fun while it lasted.

You inch your head up toward mine

where your eyes brighten, intense, 

as though I were observer and you

a doppled source. In the blue light

in the air we suddenly leave our selves

and watch two salt-starved bodies

lick the sweat from each others’ lips.

When the one mosquito in the night

comes toward our breathing, the pitch

of its buzz turns higher

till it’s fat like this blue room

and burning on both of us;

now it dies like a siren passing

down a street, the color of blood.

I pull the blanket over our heads

about to despair because I think

everything intense is dying, but you, 

you, even asleep, hold onto all

you think I am, more than I think, 

so intensely you can feel me

hugging back where I have gone. 

I like being with you all night with closed eyes.
What luck—here you are
coming
along the stars!
I did a road trip
all over my mind and heart
and
there you were
kneeling by the roadside
with your little toolkit
fixing something.

Give me a world, you have taken the world I was.