Capitulation. Acts of salvage. The maple leaves, on the cusp
of another flaming season, bow their heads reverently
as the sudden drizzle descends to anoint their cheeks.
Where I once found a sanctuary in the rock harbor
that was the crook of his arm—folds of skin redolent
of mock orange just after rain & the not yet ripened
grip of desire—now neither of us could bear the nettle-sting
of the other’s touch. We let reticence bloom
wide as a year between us. Beneath our glass boat,
koi weave through water like silver shuttles through
the fabric of a lucid dream and when we bend
over the gunwale to examine their translucent scales,
not once do they flinch from the cold blade of our fixed
gaze. Simple trust. A kind of faith, whose purity
often gets confounded with wilful blindness but, perhaps,
best resembles the near-silence of snow filling the spaces
it sets out to fill—all the crevices, the open crypts—
as if snow or silence had a mind of its own. And I find it
ever more difficult—though not yet impossible, not yet—
to distinguish the faith I never had from the faith I did
that has lost its lustre over the years. Are houses burnt to ashes
still homes? Can a single flake of ash bear the weight of
nostalgia? I ask of the dusk making a gilded shipwreck
of the looming mountain as if it’d understand the kind
of belonging that lies at the end of ruins. Above us the sea
of leaves swirls timidly in gentle castigation. His hands,
which only last night had ebbed from the rough shore
of my skin, now frame my trembling waist. A quiet hum
pools cleanly like moonlight in the varnished chalice
of his voice: a tentative minuet as I blur to bliss.
Under the maples slowly searing toward a deeper shade
of crimson, two bodies sway and lift hymnward.
Leave them be. Leave their belief in forgiveness intact
and the stars over their heads
clear & quavering as tears.