full measure of day, now, and my mind
is a room with a halo of light in the corner
where my fingers trace the yoke
of your collarbone, your mood
as elusive as the dams behind your eyes.

i touch you like stroking raised hairs.
if i lay my hand along your cheek,
will your arms raise to embrace me
in reverence to the sudden light ? or like
a thumb in spongecake, will
my love make just a small impression...

vows have broken over our hearts
like branches on the journey
that has led us to this maze. eight
floors down from this window
there's a spread of grass and flowers

because this poem isn't about skin
that shivers beneath a kiss. we know
all that--damp panties, erections,
kisses, sweat, tears--we will wake
from our trance with wish rings on our fingers
like the knuckles of a gnarled tree.

this poem is about leaves
and loves and loves leaving
and about how love can fail so utterly
that sorrow spreads like clover.
...condemned we kneel before
the altar of each other.

from the open door, leaves
rustle across the balcony
like broom straw. wind-weary sunlight
drops as air spills like rain
over me. words pelt lightly
and dissolve into the screen.

the end was written long ago,
before we turned page one.
perhaps we'll never meet.
but i still recall your laughter,
your voice, and think about
your skin until the silence
becomes a noise and tiptoes away

yesterday.  i unraveled my hopes like a
prayercloth--torn in places, calligraphy
bleeding along the edges, devoid of
answers.

even after all that has gone before, i
wanted to believe that they heard me,
they cared; they were telling the truth...

my hands were hobbled like birds--a fat
bulb in my numb right hand, the call-button
for a nurse who didn't give a shit.

squeeze that button and you'll get a whole
bag of wrath, pillows jammed under your knees
until your legs fall off the sides;

in the book of lost entries, you no longer
exist, where you were is a smudged erasure
in the bottom margin.

across the hall, lights are shutting off
but all you can hear is the clang and clatter
of the MRI machine.

come lay your bones
on the alabaster stones

and if you survive this, know
that they are irritated that you took
up their time with your pain...

yes. you hope for a day with
soft edges of kindness, buoyant
with a decent happiness to release
the heart's shroud...

but that was a former era.

this is the last poem in the book