A Bystander in Every Reverie

Solstice

What luck that light 
                                    returns—a tilted planet

all it takes for seasons
                                    to proliferate like reindeer

dinosaurs, heartbreak. 
                                    Grown for these shifts,

still some growl and wrench
                                    when light shrinks,

stuffing their mouths with sugar,
                                    nuzzling salt lamps.

What else retreats? Language, 
                                    those Spanish verbs no one asks

me to conjugate anymore. Love,
                                    which glides out of harbor

after harbor. What luck that light
                                    returns without request,

dripping off icicles, landing 
                                    on the backs of sunbathing cats. 

It’s called la luz in Spanish
                                    as if to remind me what’s luminescent

is losable—I swore I’d live at a less
                                    tender angle. Promised

I’d stop scrawling invitations 
                                    on the back of junk mail.

Yet here I am. A spoon for light
                                    to fill back up again. 

Elegy for Nigel

Nigel, the loneliest bird, dies 
next to the concrete decoy he loved (whose feathers he preened).
Maybe he had an active imagination.
Maybe he hated the idea of being a parent (whose coldness he adored).
Maybe he hated sex. Maybe loneliness
is a garden (whose silence sang next to him)
and Nigel a volunteer coneflower, wild phlox (whose ardent heart).
Maybe it was an elaborate joke (whose stoic delivery). Maybe he was winking all along,
sunset painting his yellow head and warming his beloved (whose heat touched his),
his concrete mate more alive than asleep.
Maybe loneliness is a kind of bravery (whose stoic resolve).
One he swallowed like a fish.
Maybe he saw in his love’s silence devotion
he was afraid to test (whose endless tolerance, whose patience swaddled). 
Maybe he was lazy. Maybe he plumped
with the satisfaction of committing an ineffable task.
Maybe he was asexual or too tender. Maybe he hurt (whose pardon withheld)
his brother and couldn’t forgive himself. Maybe he forgot to leave.
Maybe it was that easy (whose voice was never no)
or it was joy, such surrender (whose constancy was balm), loneliness
a kind of rookery, lined with concrete,
where time grew wide and generous (whose infallible heart).
Maybe he thought what the hell. Maybe it was a dare.
Maybe he didn’t know why (whose rigid wings),
and relished not knowing—his ignorance thick
and flightless as love. 

A Bystander in Every Reverie

Reader, I married them all.
Each beloved briefly—one by a creek,
another below a cathedral

of trees, another at city hall—
yes, in my mind. In the taffeta
of daydreams, I let my love 

for them lead me toward a life
that terrifies—steady and kept.
Yes, my fear is justified: 

I married once in waking life.
I saw how it undoes each spouse,
that union whose gravity

beckons grievance: who left
the oven on, who kissed
someone new, who hid

their fears like thank you notes
lost in the couch cushions? 
I can’t think of marriage

without thinking of the state:
tax benefits, beneficiaries,
health insurance, the centuries

it wasn’t about love.
O, it’s a knot all right.
Tied like a—I’ll stop there. 

The truth is, I love
weddings. The dancing, the vows
buoyant with lace and glitter. 

Innocence glossing the betrothed
duo—even those who sign up
for seconds (or more)—

so they glow for the photographer. 
Each believing the words’ performance
is a seal, a seance, a sorting. 

Reader, the time I spoke those vows
I heard asterisks footnoting
forever and until. 

Try, that trying word unspoken. 
No one queried my sweaty palms, 
the aching canyons of my armpits

as signs to tear the license up—
from the start, there’s an expectation
of silence as an occasional requirement. 

Perhaps that’s why I prize
witnessing nuptials, an act
at once allegory and sunrise, no mention

of the tawdry everyday, all of us
briefly a kind of court, a royalty—
pageantry without bureaucracy, love

without disappointment. What I’m saying is,
even if no one attends these fantasies, 
I watch myself repeat the promises I broke. 

I laugh at her, bystander in every reverie,
tittering with disbelief, but adoring
the fairy lights, the cake, the bouquet—

what kind of dress, you ask? 
Not white, not green.
Silver, this time, perhaps. A slate. Blank.