If I were to hover you, famish you
     with my curtained shade of hair, would you

remind me of casseroles, literal
     translations, the day of the immanent

visitor I have long been awaiting,
     if I were to say the language of your hesitance

makes smile fear would you accompany
     me to a museum, to a sky-sailed ship?

If I could sit only facing you, I would try
     poly-syllabics, everything rhymed with

wood, delicate Appalachia, even
     the apex of a Virginia I have

never seen the island of your liver,
     the Africa of your small arm, the tack

we push and fall back on, how wind is made
     alluvial, how bends become second

nature, I cling to you and am silenced
     on Hart Street a man howls no

at the morning, each time I visit a cat
     turns a corner, not black

but red, red as silhouettes and translations—
     marionettes and carnations, imagined

clefs—treble, bass, beveled staffs un-wood to
     reveal themselves, uncurl and anoint

us, with harp sounds and with singing, I am
     bringing you this orchestra, it is

in the overhead compartment of my transitory
     heart, here beside the leather valise that holds

the sweaters I packed with free associations,
     camisole, I confront my expectations, I

bow to the bowl of rations—I never asked for these,
     sleeves of a garment banister, up

the hatch to your roof on Hart Street, I examine
     the sky for signs of marvel and chipped

plaster, but super heroics are absent, only alabaster
     as though we had been shingled in camera,

a porthole of aperture every light year, I speak
     of miracles as though exposure were

some simple gift, I lift the inlets of your hands
     to imprison me, the hinges of your fingers

are majesty in constellation Ursa, in the supermarket
     deity, I live with your formica

knells, in the aisles, rice and paper on the floor moat
     us, we devote us, we sit here and we wait.