You showed me a dog-eared book from your college
days, an anthology of poetry which you somehow
kept throughout all your moves because you loved it.

When I opened the pages, I saw where you had used
a yellow marker to highlight certain lines and passages,
and tears sprung to my eyes — God am I lost in you!

Time fell away, and I was sitting inside you, looking
out through your young eyes as you let the words
reach out and touch you, just as I love to touch you.

We are so many parts of other parts, all circling around
the great pillar of brilliant light that makes everything
so dear, so perfect in its own moment, so clear.

I don’t know how this happens, that we are brought
together in a scene so brimming with this wild ecstasy
that I can barely breathe when you take my hand in yours.

And sometimes, in moments like these, I imagine
that if I loved you any stronger I would dissolve this
form and shine forever as the light around your body.

Our kind of radiance would be like the struck tone
of a great bell rung through pristine emptiness —
it would ripple out, ripple out, feeling to infinity.