Broken river, you’re not broken after all,
you just dropped your wineglass.
Tattered sky, you’re only raining,
get used to it. Not even the brown laurel
is dead, not even the dry things the rushes said
or the little spinning creature, pivot
its smashed innards. Maybe we start out rising
and stay that way, two people really one
shadow in the advancing day, trying
to take the guesswork out of rapture,
hostages of we know not what,
perhaps ourselves or the more perfect other
never seen whose meddling is hardly felt
except as twilight’s paw upon one’s shoulder
gently prodding us away from each other,
away from the fire toward that clarifying
dark, free as sleep from desire, subject, theme.
But some call remains suspended back there
still rich with ambiguity as a cry of love
sounds like pain and vice versa, both
of which came from you and you caused.
from Fall HigherFind it in the library
Copyright © 2011 Dean Young
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc.
on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.