I have enough times been the ampersand,
the hitch between two vehicles
the vehicle itself careening questionably
up the mountain road, which is,
in my opinion, poorly designed, a hazard.
It is sometimes called the coast,
the coastal highway, but never
the cliff-side transfer whereby you take
your life in your hands, or more literally
the wheel in your hands, or the hands
beside which you sit, the wheel by which
many subtle gestures ensure
your safe arrival. Anyhow, it seems to me
a very poor choice of transit. However
much we love vehicular independence,
the illusion thereof. Or the glamour
of regency ghouls. That golden age.
Anyhow, the vehicle, she, why not,
that has many times been me,
and hardly splendorous, sinking
dolefully, doefully, dutifully
into the “lake,” rolling graceless over,
eating up the “blurred yellow lines,”
eating pavement, often graciously so.
I have been the pinch of weather
in the phenomenological space
between you lovers, the compartment
in which you exist hand to thigh.
The crowbar in the garden rusting
from strange use, with little ambition,
who would throw such a thing there?
And when I am no longer analogous,
I go. Likely poorer and better off besides.

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become interesting.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. The desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a little and listen:
music of hair,
music of pain,
music of looms weaving our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.