NOVEMBER PASTORAL

​How we love: by taking another name
into our mouths and swallowing it
 
for safekeeping. By softening at a touch
the way dusk dissolves the city,
 
bodies unmooring, skin syrup-sweet.
I read a poem
 
in The New Yorker about wind
turning grass into italics and watch rain
 
dimple the puddles that flood the road.
On days like this, you and I like to hike
 
up the hill behind the clutter of apartments
and lie in the grass. It grows
 
high enough to keep us hidden, limbs
muscled open like oak, shirtbacks
 
soaked through. You reach for my hand--
Remember how we used to touch
 
like we feared electrocution? I watch a bird fly
across the sky and wonder
 
how we must look lying here huddled
for warmth—one wave echoing another.
 
And if you ever want to be a shipwreck,
I’ll be the seabed on which you rest.
 
I always knew I belonged
in water. And, now, raindrops pearl my hand
 
as I reach toward your cheek, rim your lips 
with mine, hunger ribboning my throat
 
shut. How to describe the flavor
 of your mouth? Rain and Earl Grey.
 
How to describe the grass swaying
in the breeze, the scorch of your skin— 
 
bright in this light—the fossae
above your collarbones collecting water.