What I can offer of myself
for you to hold onto here:

a worn shoe,
a loose tongue. Mileage
and incessant talk about 
mileage. I show
every step, every stumble,
and I won’t shut up.

One broken shoe,
clearly a discard.
Not worth picking up
from the pavement,
really; stories
spilling out from that floppy
tongue, out of holes
and near holes.

By their nature shoes
are not about hope
once they’re broken in,
instead are about trudging
and when there’s only one
they’re barely noticed unless
one trips over them and then?
Gone, trashed, tossed —

one worn shoe of a man.
Dust in the folds. Dim shine,
politely called patina.
The sole a tattered page.
I’ve been places, though,

and could go farther
even though there’s no reason I should,
even though it looks impossible
that I could go anywhere ever again — still,

how soft I’ve become.
How uniquely gentle I could be
to your touch.

I come home, sit
by the window
at nightfall after the close
of a hard day,
hard month, 
hard year.

I wish there were
softer tidings
in the air.

I sit by the window,
imagine you
as the dawn
of softer days,
months, years;

sit straining to hear
whispers of
you coming home.

1.
When I saw you first
I did not understand 
what to make of you

When I realized
it wasn’t my job
to do any making
I began to love you

When I loved you first
all I could think of
was building us a boat
and sailing away to
somewhere easier 

As if there is anywhere easier
than on the sea itself 
to learn love 

How it tosses you
How it can swallow you
in the moment
of its greatest beauty

How all of us are swallowed
by the same sea

2.
It should not be as hard
to be ourselves in safety
as we make it for each other

It ought to be simple to flow
with what you feel you are
and let others flow

unquestioned
unchallenged
and unafraid

It should not be so hard
to step away from how
we’ve always funneled

each other’s identities
into such narrow
chutes and sluices

Listen to the crash and grind
That current pushing against
the walls we built to create it

We are drowning
trying to navigate the complexity 
we created

when it ought to be as simple
as you flow as you flow
and I will flow as I flow

cutting our natural beds 
into this good earth
Perhaps we’ll meet along the way

or perhaps not
but all flow goes to the sea eventually
All who flow go into the same sea

3.
It’s not my place
to build against your flow

as it is not yours
to build against mine

As it is not our place
to stem any flow

No matter that we
act as if it were our place

As if any flow could be stopped
forever

As if all flow 
doesn’t end up

swallowed
in the same sea

We’re out
in the meadows
hiking although
there’s a predicted
likely chance of
torrents and thunder.

Ahead of us hours
of waiting, walking,
hanging on the movements
of every breeze-turned
leaf.  

I suggest we
might not want
to get our clothes
wet, and it might be
a fine idea
to take them off
while we’re waiting
and stow them in our
packs (which also make
fine pillows when filled).

You smile like
the light behind a long,
low cloud full of rain
when the ground
has been parched
for weeks.

What you said to me —
not what you said, but how you said it,
in a voice like bees drowsing around the sill,
a murmur one hair above whisper; with
enough volume to pause me in mid-kiss
and make me pull back and see you
newly, wiping the sweat from my eyes
and re-opening them to see you again
as you were when we first met;
what you said
held me in a cloud, a mist of suspension,
slightly afraid of touching down and losing
this rising, this hovering as if by angels 
above the warm but finite earth, 
what you said
that is only recalled as tattoo upon my back,
as being there always but requiring a turn,
an effort to see it;
what you said.

Oh, what you said —

all I need now and always
is in what you said that day
that pulled me into you,
into my life that I call now

us

we two

the two of us 

one.

It appears
I have been shot again: 
silently as always, 
from afar as always,
with an ancient weapon
as always.

When an arrow enters
it breaks a path for blood
and for pain
but also for perfume
I forget I have within me
whenever I am between
such wounds.

I settle with a shiver
to my knees — calmer
than last time it happened
by a small degree,
gladder than last time
by far;

savoring gusts of 
lemon and honey, 
cinnamon and clove,
I close my eyes
to await the arrival 
of The Archer
who soon will come to see 
what has been taken this time.

Soon enough the work will follow:
the work of kissing down this pain, 
binding this wound, helping me
to my feet, raising me to full 
height, pushing me to walk on changed 

and no longer alone, together
breathing night-garden air.