Crossings

My love for you

this time

is at dusk. There's a

concrete curb poured

on top of an asphalt drive, and I

step up from

asphalt, to concrete, and think of

the exact feel of you, if you

were in my path, and my next step

took me into you, against you, just where

my cheek would press on you, and my

legs against your legs, and myself

on yourself, and your warm breath without

a word, one robin we both hear, a

few cars gone by, a mass of

dark clouds to the south, three-quarters

moon and dampness in the cold, because

we're above freezing, we choose

to stand on the concrete, on top of

the asphalt, on top of the crust of

the whole world, pressing, hearing

most things, seeing

some things, feeling temperature, smelling as

much as you do when its this

cold, stopped in our tracks

pressing, with evening

falling around us, and

night coming fast, and

pressing together, for now.

You Can Take It

Have Two, Should

Sixteen Days

Fifteen Days

Berkeley Hills

We all live on a slope

that rises from the sea

disguised by streets, houses we like,

walkable shopping areas. Every

night, when we lay down in our beds

we make a pattern of bodies

laid out on a slope

disguised by the houses and streets and relatively

empty spots of the shopping areas,

and parks, where not as many sleep. Its us, the houses,

the beds, and the ground that is sloped. The houses and

beds let us hover over it. Sometimes some of us

are away traveling, sleeping other places

or having company, having more sleepers in our areas. That's the variation

in our pattern. Occasionally

new permanent addition. Baby. The fiancé from Chicago

who moved here, for you.

Every night, its a pattern, and in the

quietest part, say 3:12am, when the

pattern is its most formed, and still, we

peel away from our bodies, and skim down the slope

and go out far over the sea

and hold our collective pose, presenting our permutation that night

to the blind skin of the rolling sea

to anything below, that might be looking up,

and see our moonlit outline.

In the morning, we break ranks, and move freely

you there, spot D54, in our grid, now standing in front of me

awaiting your latte, and you

spot L271, whom I stop for to let cross the

street, whose long

nightgown hem I saw touch the surface of the ocean

last night, is the reason you're crossing

here now, to go buy detergent, for laundry day.