When weather comes, it beats us conscious
and we separate, to the window, to the edge.
When we find each other after, that softness
lies between, calling attention to itself as if recurring in a dream.
So we run ourselves along it, discovering its lengths and depths,
returning to its need for calmness and exhaustion,
coloring it in the very dark with kisses.
It
is in the quality of being blind to it that we come upon it,
not remembering the afternoon and its crammed vases,
when the figure reclining in relief seemed very like you,
or someone like you. We chose instead the morning,
sitting in the sunlight of a breakfast accounting,
hardly appearing to remember at all-as in the lobbies
of so many watering places. You were there.
In the arts of the orient there can be
a graciousness in the presence of what is not seen.
We are aware of something under the cloth,
seeing only the sharing of tea and the poling of boats.
At times we do not see the fisherman,
becoming lost in the arrangement of blossoms
in the house opposite, as he is lost in his boat
beneath his sail.
Though there are things to be explained in having seen:
Such as why the scent of hair and weave of silk,
or tone of voice and choice of words
upon your setting of the table,
allusions to the fragrance of a certain dish,
and why we couldn't just begin, and how we will.
And when. And if. And on and on until we sleep.
