i want to write a poem
that can swallow lightning and wind
and crush all that power into a single bright seed
to plant in the wet ground between us

i want to write a poem
that will flourish like rome
that will rust like bronze
and rise each morning with the russet sun
a poem that will be its own colosseum
each word a lion; your heart a gladiator

i want to write a poem
that will weave music into silence:
a love song, a requiem, a lament,
a death knell, an exaltation

i want to write a poem
that is soft and sharp--
to build you a nest of letters
with fragments of string and bits of daybreak:
a new shelter that can never replace the old

i want to write a poem
that will cover you
a blanket woven of whispers
of all the secrets i've spoken only to the wind

i want to write a poem
but i cannot be fluent
in a language that does not exist
and science has no term
for the cosmic force of my need

and how can i write a poem
when my lips and breath and mind,
my knuckles and gasps and eyes,
my fingers and knees and dreams--
cannot grasp your existence?