I hide from dust, from the gravity of pebbles
and even now in this space between galaxies
the faint light of a dog star is too much.
This chrome idea of a body is made too perfect,
made to feel everything, sense the orbits of moons
against my ribs like your palms in shadow,
made to inhale down to the smallest silver alveoli
this constant bloom of neutrinos: your warm breath.
Still, I am mirror and what you give to me,
I give to you. When I glide forward all that is
parts. This body announces the body though movement,
through these splayed fingers grazing the atmosphere
of fluid worlds. Cosmos, let this shared velocity
have meaning; with meaning everything comes.

Gravity in Winter

Harbor tide sways slowly inland,
pauses against the pale rough shore,

then begins the long eastward drift
toward Newfoundland, toward deeper waters.

Here, bundled in parkas, still sheathed
in ourselves we think of tomorrow,

the reaching gravity of moon
again in wide orbit and this continual

ocean searching from one coast to the other.
Back at the house we let fall wool scarfs

to floorboards, begin to warm to the selves
in ourselves. Body of water,

bodies in water, in the white porcelain of bathtub,
what pull is this that leans her body forward

to this body, bows head and lips to chest?
Cold morning, how the tide slides

forward over the last night's snowfall,
how it sweeps it all away.

Lions, Tigers & Bears

In your every night's sleep: the musked mane,
the chipped white fang, and wet hovering claw.
Out of dresser, out of closet's cave, this bane,

now the comb on the shelf -- a thin little maw.
Each wide breath risks moth-wing against tongue,
a new flutter beside ear, upon exposed jaw.

The long belt eels around doorknob, hung
like dark river down to the cold lake of the floor
where fuzzy sock shaped piranha were flung.

And even next to you, this smooth animal, more
defined, bipedal, articulate -- the open eye,
the sapient fingers that shut the bedroom door.

The wild that calls draws lips against thigh,
each mortal body feral until morning, oh my.