love

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Together we made strangers of ourselves. We knew this and bore
it with dignity. Of the things we did not speak, the tacks
we made in mind and poise, the coolness with which we moved

in crowds, each of us encased as if by glass, none
would meet another gaze. It was this merit that afforded us containment.
It was this inwardness that held us out against annihilation.

We moved in multitudes, our erratic swarming
well channeled by the canyons of the country we inhabited—
the philosophical repose our buildings held, the cool formality of light

upon our towers. To each other, we were a restive scenery,
like the sidling forms of cats, the emergent patterns of the ants.
Upon us, an otherness crept. We moved privately

through the public spaces of our lives. We learned not to see
what we were, even when forced violently into intimate proximities,
even when we held each other to keep from falling.

We held our lives in thin separation above and below, left and right.
Years might have passed, we might have never learned who we were.
We made strangers of ourselves and to ourselves became strangers—
in our absence, we grew frozen and small.

Sometimes we were quiet, alone in the spaces we inhabited but did not share
We moved down the stone steps of our architecture, clutching
our briefcases, our jackets, our selves. Sometimes we waited,

our hearts silent in the greatness of the private country that we had built.
We looked out upon the longings of our consciousness.
We felt sadness in what had entered us. For the newness of our love unborn.

Last night, the autumn arrived with the rain. Go out,
the leaves have turned up their palms. Oh, to breathe
deeply again, to feel expansive in the immense

space summer left behind! We can see ourselves
once more, buttoned and bustling. Crowded together,
we smile to each other, as if we have just noticed

for the first time. We are too high on cold oxygen.
Too full of freedom. For now change feels like no end,
even though the wind sends darkened leaves scurrying

through the streets, birds scattering from the trees.
We feel that winter's lonely hours are far from now.
We trust that the death of things is not, their dying only joy.