Not long ago you sent me photographs of the palest pale
and for weeks I was awash in the colour of muted understanding.
Years ago we opened up and shed our clothes
right in the bold front yard, a summer's rain
and nothing else existed, not history, not shyness,
nor the neighbours shielded behind the draperies pulling cords,
and years before that alone on a trail I touched my naked collarbone
and a hawk traced the blank sky in fine sweeps, searching,
while you pressed babies into the invisible mesh of me, semen like sardines,
miles away in another country, musked and snarled with the forest floor.
Lying together on cold stones plentiful enough to become a single body
the waves find the shore, or the shore tells the waves when to rest;
it doesn't matter who is who.
Far out in the mists of the horizon shapes rise and fall,
the world takes and loses form.
