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In the airport, the roar of travelers around you.
You walk through the sea of them
which parts and returns, parts and returns.
Once seated, you open the book.
Stillness collects around you like mist
on the surface of a lake.
Before the sun lifts itself up
from the bed of tall pines,
the ice touches the lake,
forms patches of milk light,
around which the mute swans glide.
They will stay here through December,
just until the water stops
moving, solidifies into ice.
Feast of milfoil, curly pond
weed. I know and you know
there are limits to this love.
To all love, in fact. But we keep
going at it, this thing
that sustains us. We rinse
in its silver each morning.
Like the swans do the light,
as ice becomes floe, becomes
ripple. At dusk we hear the
flap of their great wings
beating a way out, a way
back, but not and never
beyond.
after looking at sculptures of dresses made from armor on Center Trail in Hopkinton, Mass.
The sunlight strikes
the torso of the word
and I see Amour
as a noun preceding
the verb.
How does love dress itself,
I wonder. With steel
instead of fabric
gathered at the waist.
These garments keep.
Will endure wind and weather.
Love is not love which alters
when it alteration finds.
When it fits well, love dresses
the wounds it inflicts. Is a suture,
a plaster. Gives off a defiant sheen,
reflecting all it is cast against.
Whatever part of speech
dresses the form,
cinched or not,
love stands armed,
aimed, the ever fixed mark
never aflight.
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