On a cold clear morning
I endeavor to separate
my body from language

The oak is nothing. The grass
is nothing and the dew is nothing.
The slow light is not a benediction,
is not enumerating the proper
forms. There are no proper forms.
And nothing is a deep and ineffable
realm, never far off, but cunning
and quiet. Like a native who knows
every bend of a river, every hollow
and meadow. Watching, unseen,
lingering and ghostly. Hiding behind
trees with their leaves of language.

***

What is about kissing? you ask.
Your smile still nascent, your body still
an adumbration, shrouded with anticipation.
How did it come about? What about it
is so damn pleasureable? Your cheeks
and your nose splotched with sun. Your
hand fishing instinctively towards my
chest, my heart. We practice archaeology.
We lose ourselves in the primal facts
of a body, foreign.

***

It is a splendid cessation.
A melody stripped to the elemental.
The instinctual communion of flesh.

The plangent drumming of a thing
whose name we have momentarily forgotten.