Finding text you took up ochre and iron,
etched the pale vellum of my mind with gold.
Illuminate this manuscript, these eyes.
Line words with woad and coal and images of birds,
fill with tumeric and lead what has been black and white.
Blank verse entwined with vines, my veins are verdigris
vessels in the workshop of your cinnabar smile.
Stiff spines stretch, a book opens,
plain pages disappear into an indigo night.
I hope that someone was thinking of me
at the exact moment that I,
thrashing the centerline of the dark highway
between
hit 100 miles per hour.
Everyone is always thinking of something else,
and I thought only of the death-shudder
of the steering wheel.
Life is complementary to life.
It is too many things not to match with itself:
The muscle-clench crunch of December snow,
fifteen minutes of afternoon sleep,
bank swallows darning the air.
In the morning we wrap lunch in wax paper,
go swimming in our clothes,
lie in the unleavened sunlight.
I would happily make sandwiches with you
until breast cancer finds and kills me.
She gave him lemons
that they squeezed over a floppy chicken,
then baked inside its soggy skin.
Later they ate the meet, their prying fingers
peeling off white strips for greasy mouths.
He gave her beer and wine and whisky,
coffee and tea,
hard bread and rough romano cheese.
They got high from a bud burning in a ballpoint pen.
At four am he took off her glasses,
uncovered eyes bare and bold.
Their faces wavered
but did not meet.
In the morning they woke curled head to foot,
sore and dry-mouthed on the couch.
He gave her a glass of water before she drove home,
thirsty for lemonade.
