The schema is bright, it is tossed on the world
where scarcely gone out the small lamp takes a beating
mercy to brace, at the hilt of one look at you, lastly
I wanted just to be young, to be hot
with a crystal of new liberality forged in a caustic solution
of sunlight amassed in the air near my cheek
& the steamed away ice of late March.
You were the owner of my sense of beauty,
the moon that would capsize its circle
& I was there moving your radius, troubled
to tender embrace to what must have seemed far
from the axis we started on, bent as it was
by convention, rejection & play in a balance of gravities
measured by daring. But the feeling
that I became less to you quickly
the haste of which made it enduring & real
left me to try at the breaks of each fact
that inertia would slide the pin back through the splintering moon
& with you, I’d go to that fountain
to shake the cascade to its bones.
The mercury climbs high & red when its cold
when the warmth has ebbed out of that water
when the failsafe of joy’s washed away in your signal
as aimless & white as the sea.
In my memory you’re wildly taller,
& finding you right in some argument
I’d come to love you as if you were many.
The street you cut through me was easy as smoke
but I must not have loved you enough without hope
for the path that led up to revolt was unfolding downhill
in the darkness of trust I neglected.
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