Summer Solstice

I wanted to see where beauty comes from

across sixty acres of northeast meadow,

it’s you I miss in the brightness

and body of every living name:

You are the green wonder of June,

root and quasar, the thirst for salt.

When I finally understand that people fail

at love, what is left but

the paper wings of the dragonfly

aeroplaning the soul with a sudden blue hilarity?

If I get the story right, desire is continuous,

equatorial. There is still so much

I want to know: what you believe

can never be removed from us,

are we impetuous,

are we kind to each other, do we surrender

to what the mind cannot think past?

Where is the evidence I will learn

to be good at loving?

there is the covenant of duskbirds.

The moon comes over the mountain, 

and I want to tell you

what I couldn’t say the night we rushed

how I love the seriousness of your fingers

I stand between taproot and treespire.

Here are twelve ways of knowing

what blooms even in the blindness

of such longing. 

We hunger for eloquence.

We measure the isopleths.

I am visiting life with reckless plenitude.

The air is fragrant with tiny fireflies

who turn on their electric wills:

an effulgence. Let me come back

whole, let me remember how to,

before it is too late.