3. Love Poem

Love Poem

Now that we have fallen in love
             you         & have let us come to this:

You, with your small stitching
Me, with my promised heart
                            & all these cards to sign.

1.
See how quickly it turns on you—
See how your fair skin         us
Pales in its half-light.

2.
Tanager, look at all these houses we’ve broken into…
Old woman watching from the far grove
For any song worth repeating. Broken windows,
Broken locks; door blown open from the inside:
Our loot scored itself.

3.
It’s hard to get a handle on what keeps.
This locked ward         that hallowed name
For it.

2.
Tanager, if only I could help you toward us.
                                           us            you