The Conjunction Holds
(with a verb in the wings)

Not the leap,
but the plank between banks—
its grain remembering
both shores.

Not the shout,
but the breath that lets
two voices
share one lung.

I am and,
I am but,
I am although—
the quiet ligature
that keeps the torn cloth
from drifting apart.

The verb would run,
would strike,
would bloom—
but I stay,
a hinge in the weather,
turning both ways at once.

Here,
in the seam’s small country,
I keep the quarrel and the kiss
in the same sentence,
and call it
poem.





.