I cannot hope to seize the concept of it except “by the tail”: by flashes, formulas, surprises of expression… I am in love’s wrong place, which is its dazzling place…
   — Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse

i paper

Opening to
a private sky

birch bitings and burnt flutter.   Our tent stretched —
smoke over the threshold when you ushered me through.

No talk —
night in the low roofs of our mouths.         

Your Ford Fury hidden in a stand of aspens,
newly ringed, keys in the ignition.   Idling

stardust, mosquitoes.       
Koriusai, Utamaro, Ursa Major’s erotic drawings,                 

closer now
to black scribblings, hole punchings, a confetti of yeses,

the reversed Star shining from a yielding margin of universe.  
Yes, yes —
                Perseids, hominids, black-eyed susans, sleep.

ii cotton

Between us:
mosquitoes purring, a purloined reverie as memory.  

Into the aspens, tripped up by roots,
into the woods on the way to the church —

everything turned up a notch, initials scarred into bark —
we’re stopped between homestead and the haunted church.

Will you look in?

Someone is pilfering linens, washing the offerings.
Is this your wife in loosestrife and coarse weave

handcuffed
to all the men I ever danced with — Hugo’s thief; the rumoured priest;

Buckshot; the Bolshevik in canvas coat and sheepskin collar;
the masked, humped

rodent with agile black hands…
                                         while

the thumb of your left hand slips over my wrists —
and the other hand lifts —

iii    leather

A shaver
to rough-house mouth, stripping the shadow that last night

bristled.
Unshaven imaginings:

what pinks that shadow pulled
apart.   Your face masked in the dark of my favourite

rose and sorrel
scarf,

brushing a cloud.
I’m nailed to the spot

wretched over
belt loops, notches.

Polished toenails, cold tiles.   Like that morning in Versailles.
Light faltering through milk bottles and cobalt

bric-a-brac finds you teased me for buying,
filled with lotions and cologne.

No cuir de Russie , but
the deadly bouquet of horseplay where jawbone meets the ear

lost
to Zorro’s razor — the sting of soap and water.

I’ve already lost you,
husband — to this other you — husband

buttering toast, answering the phone.

iv linen

Whisking a béchamel, buttering toast.
You’ve got all the pots in the house out to poach

eggs florentine. The Joy of Cooking splayed.   Sleeves
rolled, forearms flexed,

forehead creased.
Egg shells in the bain-marie ,

bananas on the sideboard, freckled and sweet.
A little rum, a little cream.

The breakfast table dressed in the washed-out wedding gift fleur de lis
linen with fraying seams (skirt to my knees).

Forks set down in a flourish the way you might lay a heart
or lead with a spade at the same table after dark.

A bed of spinach and sorrel, a forethought of salt.
And afterthoughts:

where’s the nutmeg? Do we have nutmeg?
But I must grace the table as a guest,

trace the fleur de lis, the butter and tea-stain motif
— and wait.