“I see you”
was the last thing you said
before I had to look away, to try to open
the door, awkwardly locked, so you must have
reached around me with your big sweet arms
and, one last time, encircled me
to no purpose.
Moments before, you had been staring
at my open, naked body
on your man’s bed,
and I had believed that before us lay
a landscape very much like that body,
which so many desire, and so few
are now ever permitted to touch.
A wild, generous land.
We, being Americans,
might imagine a place
where freedom is possible.
To find that place
indeed without water, nothing there
to nourish and sustain through time.
I have been traveling years, and still
my effort cannot find the edge
of this field.
I live where no one lives,
but for the old dog,
scraping through her last days.
The entire world
has become suddenly younger,
intentions and ideas flying
through a cold, vast interconnectedness,
which we must all now, suddenly, make
also a sort of home.
Open Space 