Here we sit
you the cautious curator of style,
dripping with Cummings and Pound
me the prodigal and ubiquitous loquator
subtle as Updike on sex

Have I told you lately
your eyes remind me
of a luminous patch of grass
the Kentucky breed, thick with blue
breezy with mid afternoon sun

and how deeply those veins of light
fragments, really, in which I remember youth
make me want to be a student
of your impossibly mapped hands

We are talking now with a thunderstorm’s fluidity
which is to say, stunning bursts of day
followed by shattering claps of ill conceived noise
so we will sit in silence, always our best form
letting ourselves elucidate in the night

I’ve missed this awkwardness you say, newly ringed,
before telling me all about the job you hate
but have accepted anyway, better for the shape of things
smiling that ludic, knowing way you do
as if to say, yes, kiddo, life marches on

But why so neatly? I yearn to ask
Is there no room left in this world
for improvisers of the heart?