HIGH SUMMER

It’s all about passageways

isn’t it? Rhizomes snaking through

loosened earth. Oaks thrusting taproots

towards buried streams. Striped bees buzzing

past petals crested with ladybugs,

dancing their codes of location.

Your eyes crinkled with mirth, it seemed,

we talked on flagstones dappled

with lichen and high-summer

murmurs, avoiding what once moved

between us. Or was that worry

I glimpsed between shadow and light?

Or moments when selves turned

transparent and each knew no

other, stopped between was and

will be? Shade has its own way of

seeing. Juggling with gravity

I’m here, looking at you. You’re still

there, looking at me.

The Sixty-Four Best Poems of 2018 (Black Mountain Press, 2019)