Incident

I remember better
than yesterday
the first day
I ever fell in love.

Dark eyed, dark haired,
exotic as an imaginary
Spanish spring out of a
Sixteenth Century legend;

your perfect lips and teeth,
your sharp animal tongue
made my thoughts
and hands prodigal.

I would have sung
like Solomon,

or like the birds
that greet the
morning sun
while dew is still
cool and magical,

or like the endless
changeable notes
of water running
softly from the hills
as long as they endure,
building to a climax
in infinity.

At least that’s
what I imagined
while my prodigal
thoughts and hands
coveted.

You always were
beyond my reach,
but it was a close thing:
I had a hint
of brooding brilliance
then, a vague promise
of something good
or sinister.

I recall the night
I knew we would not be,
the night I knew
I was to blame,

and I would
have to live
lonesome,
looking for
another savior –

a jag edged piece
with no puzzle
to belong to.

That was the first night
I ever wanted
to be drunk
on purpose –

to dissolve into
the numb nothing
that was the world
for some of us.

Thou shalt not covet;
thou shalt not want.

Certainties have a way
of turning themselves
into prophecies;

you who were
so clean and clear
and singular,
have merged
into the series
of your successors;

and increasing desire
has become
a disguise for
desperation.

I am too old to be
a broken child,
too young to
become bitter.

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