I felt with one hand in your depths--
fathomless!--for an emblem, an anthem!
No other time but then
did every bright vestige touch my fingers
to be held close,
and now,
and forever!

Only later when I moved to breath did I find
I’d come up with only,
handwritten in ballpoint:

“Mahogany: A color which
may or may not have been
a precise descriptor of your sweater.”

It must be an interloping loyalty that grieves me,
as you claimed never to have been
a sensualist.
Yet you brushed my temple with wasp-nest lips!

How sad that your echo exists thus, solely thus;
It is, I think, a paltry token
of a transcendence so complete
that, for once, I did not ***** for color,
but had it kissing
my cold hands.