this is the track I've had on REPEAT all afternoon: she is butterfly
brilliant riband, rice flour face, silken, even her voice a sashed kimono
if I were foolish like her:
but aren't I foolish like her
spotting the coil of smoke and the billowed sail
against the verge of sky
simple on the rise surveying the anchorage: simple me, signal me
dreading the confident assumption of return, dreading more
uncertain tone to come, the thinning notes, performance
too close to my own impatient—swells, a surge: sick wind
but the emotion is, after all, an artfully conjured gesture
arranged marriage between a past ache and frail woodwinds
I could skip ahead
could break the inconsolable loop
of harbor, waiting, overlook, waiting, inevitable waning eye
troubled robins, once more in the handkerchief trees
once more, brief aquarelle of triplet lilies, blue as willowware
in that interval before his embrace falters, stuck, founders
such a pitch of tenderness in the voice
such an awful lot of noise