No other way to describe it:
stepping from the house,
marrying her face
to mist, to air, a state
of in-between, years squeezed,
the juice infused, so many Springs
and what happens next? Cuttings
made of young succulents
nearly fail proof. Dutch bulbs
she dug from the shed
shoved into soil, this random thought,
that plan, buried
in their twenty linked years,
the Hope Whale no longer ridden,
bronco style, along day’s
deep undulations but viewed
through painted lenses
from an observation deck,
thin inklings of age
marking space around her eyes
whenever she squinted. Fingers
crossed, flesh forged,
each time he uncrossed her legs
and entered his name,
neither of them knowing
how they’d survive:
world of caved souls,
its dirty greedy light.
Only how pleasure made
the sun strike, the diving bell tremble,
an amen rippling down
another midnight slope,
one tulip shuddering, swallowed up,
a petal pressed between
the mind’s purple horizon
and the silence of the field
that made them repeat: let’s drink,
cast another hour, another
hand to the bucket. Love’s
oblivion is bottomless.