Along such paths we have followed you, circling through
clamorous cities, to watch your voices, saffron and lavender,
opening together slowly, like dusk. It was always summertime
at the High Level, Brooklyn, and Minto Bridges, the air

shining with the pieces of you your lives knotted before us,
and I remember even on cold nights, underneath the cicadian buzz
of streetlights, snowflakes framed your faces with
garlands of petals. Your love--such a gentle reaching

for the sweet--has grown resplendent. As a garden leans
loud and lovely with bee-balm, beauty berry, and heart leaf
towards the madrigal call of the sun, so too do you, moving
together towards sky and wind, reverberate in joy, for what is love,

but a gift of sound to air? Say the words now--you love--
and we understand that the world’s fullness is not touched,
but held, as a river’s water is held, without being hushed,
as a kiss is held, in the breath, birthed with each syllable, sigh,

laugh, lament. Say you love again; sing it out da capo.
From the beginning, thought wants only to be named. Your lips touch,
each word as substantial as the movement of something moving
so sweetly, we break ourselves into hearing just to see.

Siren

I will feel my feathers fall,
my hard scales slough.
We'll crawl together to the sea.
Roddy Lumsden, “My Descent”

I am finding it hard to write; you, still
in that other city with your aged dog,
are busy reading. That’s all I know.
Someone else’s words

pass your lips, their octopus shapes dance
in your mouth, while your urchin tongue
swells to drink in more brackish juice.
Otters watch you sink, reckless, into

currents, trembling with the kelp and eelgrass,
until the reefs read back the braille
of your bones through the parchment
of your golden skin.

You need only sing out, alone and tall;
I will feel my feathers fall.

I miss your voice. I would have tried to call,
but you said not after six; anyway, my heart
swarms with crickets, and my hands
are clenched in fists. What could I say?

That dry and wordless, I still reach for you
in the dark? That some remembrance
of your mouth’s mollusc dirge sweeps
from my mind the very names of things?

Nothing grows here and I haven’t rained
in years. No, this thing with you cannot be good.
You’re awash in a story many miles away,
while, mineral, I now stand exposed,

silent as a prairie bluff.
Sing out to me: my hard scales slough.

You’ll take the whole world up
and swallow it hard, flotsam and debris,
till those foamy words seed more fabular wrecks.
I forget all else. Your eyes’ blue depths unraveled me.

Come, sing; all I need is for you to breathe.
We'll crawl together to the sea.