I would like to capture
whatever it was that I found
so disarming, so reaffirming,
yes even magical, in this moment

(though it is true my gift
for such description comes in
and pulls back like the tides,
if the tides possessed no love of ritual)

I have turned off my radio,
which is not something I am prone to do,
but tonight I would like to hear
the somnolence of this evening,

its windless charm: the starlings
rustling from the brush, intruders,
the crickets languorously tuning
their falsetto voices, serenaders,

but mostly the incredible stillness,
as if the impossibly blue sky -
really, it is the shade God
intended blue to be, pure as water -

is a sheet of ice, a preservationist,
calcifying all these motions as a fossil.
In this brief interlude of near silence,
my car hitches alive, its movement

a contradiction, pulling up a faint
breeze, bearing me forward
so that I come to a stop sign,
and you are to my perpendicular,

running through the beautiful
mundane necessities of your own day.
I feel the ineluctable surprise
of a familiar set of eyes, hands,

a body whose shape and variegated
curves, hollows, and knobs I find
soothing. Oh, who am I kidding?
My touch has abandoned me.

You waved shyly
I waved with genuine joy.
But it is the magic of those few seconds
after - us diverging, going places

mysterious but known, the evening
slowly and sonorously dying -
that I wish I had the graceful
hands to render

I remember it being one
of the more satisfying of my life,
in ways that will have to remain secret
to both you, dear reader, and me,

the flailing author.

~

One more try, a day later:
gratitude, its composed calm, its
settle like the first flakes of snow.

Gratitude for the warm gilded gold sun
through the leafy trees, flowing like champagne;

For those very still, quiet trees holding onto
their green sheath, not yet ready to shed;

For your lovely face, the smooth amazement
of your smile, the gentle hope in your eyes
like the ocean receiving dawn;

For my breathing, for my fingers, and
for the imponderable; which is to say,
for all.