I could scrub your length tearing sponge after sponge and not get you cleaner
one last chunk of snow on Johnny’s Taurus dripping but somehow intact
make it new again each season     you seem to say     watering the slush
the puddle disappears & if it takes you with it then you’re everywhere
I’ve looked in the sea almost drowned on Borneo in your currency
I’ve stared in their eyes in seventeen foreign states and haven’t seen you
you are not in sex     in logic     in art     if I touch it you’re not there
for an elegy     I ask to be true     does it have to be about you
the water’s alive with a million sorry faces averting their eyes
so     I ask the air     filling in sacred for you     well     why am I here
we all see you as being whatever we need to convince ourselves
if I freed this line of birds how would I know what to do with them next
two carnation vases one somehow turned against me to receive your light
others chirp above seeing me for what I am too slow to frighten