Archipelago

You have come into and out of my life

like a needle knitting me to the earth.

Here and not here, rising and diving.

Yours is a love that requires

talking to sounds that gather in grass,

holding a bottle by the neck. Why blame you

for the end of summer or its reprisal?

Why march down to the road

and travel it? I don’t know. We must accept

everything. Light seems to exist just for us

and still the mushrooms after the last rain

are all suspicious.

It has taken a long time to accept

the fall of twilight into evening,

my perpetual dinner of roses.

“Archipelago” appeared in 32 Poems and is from Alexandria (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2014).