Do most of us have a way of looking away from what we want
just before we take it?  This confusion, Juliet and Othello
suffered, and we call them great lovers.

Last week in village traffic, I remembered Randy, who twenty years ago
took her own life because she loved it and couldn’t get it right. 
I cried for half a mile of stop & go.

Your habit, saying, I can’t understand….I can’t believe you did….arouses
the mule in me.  It’s your hands warm against my skin
that knit misunderstanding.

Our jokes reveal the comic choreography of our arguing.  Why don’t we
wear squirt gun boutonnières and clown the battle
off the balcony tumbling into bed?

On my 40 and 45th birthdays, in a consistency of concern,
my brother sent me expensive sunglasses, to save these aging
eyes from too much light. 

Once you put a blue crystal beneath our daughter’s pillow.  This is ordinary
now, you said, but in your sleep, it will glow
with monster killing magic.

Around our eyes the tracks of all the folks come visiting. 
Please stay, let’s talk.  It’s love and wondering
that give a face good character.

On sunny days, zero and windy, the kittens curl in the broken
summer chair, eyes closed, heads back, claws extended, licking
pressing one another’s fur.

After days in other people’s houses, I return to hot supper, laundry
hanging in the bathroom, the rooms cleaned and straightened.
I’m welcome.  I welcome your homey breathing

love.
                                                                             2/1-9/15/1989