It is a kind of love, is it not?

How the cup holds the tea,

How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,

How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes

Or toes. How soles of feet know

Where they’re supposed to be.

I’ve been thinking about the patience

Of ordinary things, how clothes

Wait respectfully in closets

And soap dries quietly in the dish,

And towels drink the wet

From the skin of the back.

And the lovely repetition of stairs.

And what is more generous than a window?

Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring,

    And all the flowers that in the springtime grow,

    And dusty roads, and thistles, and the slow

Rising of the round moon, all throats that sing

The summer through, and each departing wing,

    And all the nests that the bared branches show,

    And all winds that in any weather blow,

And all the storms that the four seasons bring.

You go no more on your exultant feet

    Up paths that only mist and morning knew,

Or watch the wind, or listen to the beat

    Of a bird’s wings too high in air to view,—

But you were something more than young and sweet

    And fair,—and the long year remembers you.

^{after Etel Adnan}

And there, 
between clean walls
you assume 
the position,
angled toward 
the red squares 
roiling
on her canvases.

Into the oils 
of a new tense
she herself
days before 
had dissolved.

There, impasto:
her mountain.

Trimmed down 
to the first 
seeing.

Tamalpais 
at every pitch,
pistachio 
patches scraping
against cobalt.
Edges opaque
until they refused.

Mountainous,
she, too—
which is to say 
surfacing,
color latching 
to the seasons 
where meaning
rushes.

Of this transition
the living are given 
no access.                                                                

You, turning 
away from 
the dry wall,
where nothing
tears through.

A red square
appears in your days
yet you know
not yet where.

            on Gustav Klimt’s painting, 1907-1908

Do you really think if you bend

me, I will love you? You

crack my chin up, your hands

brown pigeons scheming reunion

at my cheek and temple, your jaw

cragged at the end of your thick neck

of longing. I claw onto you

as the only tree here, your

swing. I’m mad for gravity though

I’m bound, diagonally, to

you. Let me. Push from your trunk towards

the edge and my freedom. Leave me

to wither while moss weeps

in the corners, our halo liquid

as yolk, waving from our bodies’ heat,

our divinity melting. My dress

blossoms loudly. You are still

wrestling me closer. If only I could

release to you my mouth just this

once and you would leave me,

but the shadows of your robe are

so haphazard. I know you will try

to smother me again. The poppies scratch. My feet

reach beyond spring.