we are the sacrilegious baptizing
saints, flinching away
from rosaries and counting
sidewalk cracks

to love
it is
the me to care for lips seriously fragile. the

for me

to leap strenuously knowing
and dance amongst unknowing
the towering cadence, my heart. to

the for me (love) the

sturdily upheave the slowly clamoring of soil,
and march widely the span, my kiss, through closing

and meet with your kiss, the legion, my soul;
(a parting of silence. a fiercely innocent foal)

do not lay me amongst thy hand
(towar' heaven ascending)
of earth stuff more come.

come thy mouth as daughters;
come thy slavering, come thy pistil keep.
a flower,

come. come as
riotously fragrant Spring
snowing easily with health.

come, and, steal my soul for sleep;
and place 'tween the knees of forests
***** bales of sighing wind.

come in most unsilent clothed
thy myriad of flesh.

come and life

unmeet thy thighs
,admitting,

perhaps the lather(your colour)
through me to seep.

the new your are is
(strangely

                 familiar)i

like i(****

knitting. the bones and how
they fit
snugly
against my bones laying

into the morning
their smallness
and the tiny groan

of their bodybetweenmyarms(isqueezeeventighter)

Summerwassohot
    (in you)
when
plum wine

,

in the tight heat of tiny Eugene

,

mudfuddly
drunkenly heaved
with ******* every night.


and sweat

i think you,
when the world
(easy with roses)
speaks a hymn
like the mute
crushing of
parted night,
will rise beyond your body
to sing with fierce grace
your hands as lips to speak;
such love (even the roots
of flowers have never known)

I can't write about miles of sown fields
or the absence of rain
or silver minnows in a cold creek

without also imagining
how the sky would look from underneath you.

I can't write about sugaring season
or my grandmother's barn on a foggy morning
or the thrum of an August day

without also imagining
kissing each one of your berry-stained fingers.