for Bobbie

Yesterday I wanted to
speak of it, that sense above  
the others to me
important because all

that I know derives
from what it teaches me.  
Today, what is it that  
is finally so helpless,

different, despairs of its own  
statement, wants to
turn away, endlessly
to turn away.

If the moon did not …
no, if you did not
I wouldn’t either, but  
what would I not

do, what prevention, what  
thing so quickly stopped.  
That is love yesterday  
or tomorrow, not

now. Can I eat
what you give me. I
have not earned it. Must  
I think of everything

as earned. Now love also  
becomes a reward so
remote from me I have
only made it with my mind.

Here is tedium,
despair, a painful
sense of isolation and  
whimsical if pompous

self-regard. But that image  
is only of the mind’s
vague structure, vague to me  
because it is my own.

Love, what do I think
to say. I cannot say it.
What have you become to ask,  
what have I made you into,

companion, good company,  
crossed legs with skirt, or  
soft body under
the bones of the bed.

Nothing says anything  
but that which it wishes  
would come true, fears  
what else might happen in

some other place, some  
other time not this one.  
A voice in my place, an  
echo of that only in yours.

Let me stumble into
not the confession but  
the obsession I begin with  
now. For you

also (also)
some time beyond place, or  
place beyond time, no  
mind left to

say anything at all,
that face gone, now.
Into the company of love  
it all returns.