87.

Ropes, planks, cups, lines, buckets, tiles, fieldstones

This is the inventory of our everyday lives

Touch them or break them and sometimes they will

Cut skin, nail, bone. Love is not angels alone

Or vows that rise up, inside and out,

Skies out on the sea beyond the cape

Or an internalized night sky. There might

Be something to that, but let’s hope

Love is something discreet, with an inhereness

Not simply reduced to self-interest,

But not a self-sacrifice for that grace.

Even though I have read Ovid, my hands

Are not turning to leaves, yet. Why do I try

To understand you when I cannot myself?