Earth, Hair, Fire, Water
Though we couldn’t kiss
or touch each other,
though we kept a good six feet between us,
six parallel lines in a hexagram
that could never intersect,
though you looked at me
like we were two bodies
huddled together on a dock
at a lake in mid-October,
my back to your chest,
arms around me like wind
over water, those six feet,
the water level in a well
that neither lowers nor rises
is not us, but is. Is me leaning
on the counter at the glass shop,
is you buying the fragile blue globe,
is us talking about the salesclerk
in the short skirt and high heels,
the best we could do
without saying us or we
or wear that for me someday.
And because we didn’t say it,
or because it was between the lines,
the upper trigram, which was water,
at that moment transformed into thunder,
and my hair, tangled from our walk
in early March wind,
skimmed the candle on the counter,
sizzled first and then ignited
into an orange ball
at the side of my head.
It was then the well in you
of never-changing water
suddenly rose to capacity,
swelled and broke the six-feet barrier,
my hair, your hands,
our bodies the reverse of our heads—
out, smolder, flame, blaze,
until you and I became
one dangerous interlocking entity,
the kind of we where the things
that were most apparent,
below and behind and beyond the counter,
for one brief, spectacular moment
flashed in our minds, then burned out.
Fly Haiku
You keep to yourself.
Not even a grape disturbed;
I like that you’re here.
We work until dark.
I go somewhere in my head,
you go somewhere else.
By morning you’re back.
The coffee stays on too long.
Who flips off the switch?
Everything’s a mess:
papers piled two feet high;
this suits you just fine.
Wasn’t there a time
when you’d have preferred foxglove?
You know I kill plants.
Even the rosebush,
once crazy with pink blossoms,
is losing its heads.
If you could just talk,
or I could see what you see;
a fly on the wall.
You’re here a month now.
This must be your way to say:
the windows are closed.
