1 New Poem

An Exchange of Nothings

You make me bare myself,
to Northwest winds,
to casks of Iron Age reprise,
to Mayflower rot of time,
to lost language, stolen hours,

but it isn’t so cold I can’t
handle.

It’s not the logic,
no constant shape of
your lemon dress shading,
however close it comes to
liberation to spindle-spool,
revelation always withdrawn.

But I came with reflections:
you shatter.

I came with glad tiding:
you treble.

I came with numbness jading:
you realize.

If I bit tongue, it was
only to cease formless flood,
only to give proper blueprint
to something without a mapped place
in phrenology charts,

to wanting your Gaelic shorthand
astride my battered Franglais accent,

calling each other as permanent
notion, perfected;

no, not that, something better:

ours.