It’s Saturday night and all the heterosexuals
in smart little dresses and sport coats
are streaming into what we didn’t know
was the hottest spot between Las Vegas and L.A.
Janet and I are in jeans and fleece—not a tube of lipstick
or mascara wand between us. Grayheads:
a species easy to identify without a guidebook—
the over-the-hill lesbian couples of the Pacific Northwest.
Janet’s carrying our red-and-white cooler with snacks for the road
across the marble tiles of the Art Deco lobby
when we turn and see the couple
entering through the tall glass doors, slicing
through the crowd like a whetted blade. The butch
is ordinary enough, a stocky white woman
in tailored shirt and slacks, but the confection—
no, the pièce de résistance—whose hand she holds
is of another genus entirely.
Her cinnamon sheen, her gold dress
zipped tighter than the skin of a snake.
And her deep décolletage, exposed enough for open-heart surgery.
She’s a yacht in a sea of rowboats.
An Italian fountain by Bernini.
She’s the Statue of Liberty. The Hubble Telescope
that lets us gaze into the birth of galaxies.
Oh, may they set that hotel room ablaze—here
in this drab land of agribusiness and oil refineries
outdoing Pittsburgh as the top polluted city in the nation—trash it
like rock stars, rip up the 300 thread-count sheets,
free the feathers from the pillows.
And may that grande femme be consumed
right down to the glitter on her sling-back four-inch stilettos
and whatever she’s glued on her magnificent skin
to keep the plunge of that neckline from careening clear off the curve.

Somewhere beyond a mountain lies 
A lake the color of your eyes—
And I am mirrored like a flight 
Of swallows in that evening-light.

       Lovers eternal, side by side, 
       Closed in the elemental tide, 
       Nurture the root of every land—
       So is my hand within your hand.

Somewhere beyond an island ships 
Bear on their sails, as on your lips 
You bear and tend it from the sun,
The blossom of oblivion.

       Eternal lovers, in whom death 
       And reaching rains have mingled breath, 
       Are drawn by the same draught apart—
       So is my heart upon your heart.

Somewhere beyond a desert rolls
An ocean that is both our souls—
Where we shall come, whatever be, 
I unto you, you unto me.

Work in the early morning but at 3 A.M.
when I’m wide awake, holding you in my arms,
time is a debt that will never be forgiven us.
For whatever night is left, our bodies draping
the peeled leather couch, your head tilts up toward
mine in still sleep & I tuck in my ear to bridge
the farness of your breathing, faint & steady,
as if you were giving me flashes of your life
without words. I want there to be nothing
which exists beyond this room, save the thrush
obligato at dawn & the past that has made me
fragile enough to feel the time bend in your hold
but once my eyes map the ceiling there’s no hope
for desire to remake life in our light-shorn image.
I begin to think about all those ancient epics
where the heroes rather become infinite than fall in love,
narrowly conquering death at the expense of glimpsing
any heaven worth living for, betraying wind, staking
silver through their own humanity. For a moment I find myself
bent on one of us becoming exactly like that—undying
& indeterminate, god-renowned & never gaining, never
losing—but something pulls me back when your hand,
even in sleep, reaches a part of my neck which has a pulse
I’ve almost forgotten, lingers as if you were making
an afterlife with your touch, says we are here even
where we are gone, going, & the world means nothing.
Who cares what I have failed to become.
I will die knowing that
we lived forever.