The Last Night

Heart, moon, breath and secrets—
Jackpot of life and
Greater than rubies for a silk-gowned queen—
Invested long ago in goddesses
And mysteries, stories and familiars.
Infrequently, a god on this theory:
If one falls, likely another will rise.

So jewel by jewel dropped or planted like magic beans
In wetlands or pools of courage or an eternity
Of fingertips or tears of fathers
As heart and moon, breath and secrets. Tumbling,
Reflecting, life, joyful and ferocious,
This heart splashes down,
Sinking to the depths of Diana, my fantastic

Huntress across eons and cultures
Light years of difference and no further
Apart than the space between humans;
Which is to say, sometimes no space,
At all, and sometimes like the deaf speaking
In lost tongues. She is elegant in silk, delicate in sheer, fierce and opaque
Like darkness at the end of life trailing the tigress. Oh, my incomparable

Beauty here to love every soul willing to love back.
And moon falls next to mysteries deep
Become this angel, David, who also loves
The young or old, the robust and the waiting.
And gifts them with wild yearning for
His touch and trades one for another and another,
Until yearning becomes us all, and the job is done. Oh, my sweet,

Isn’t this a terrible delight, the way the swamp gasses glow,
The way breath in aerosol gasps
Becomes clouds of trilling vapor? Stutter, speak,
Desperately sing then, relying on voice and sorcery.
Start and stop and start again until, unhalted,
Shout savage melodious joy, defy the bully thunder,
Contest the wild’s winking rumors, confront its sly cunning.

Oh, finally my writhing, ecstatic secrets go further, go firmer,
Go longer, go sunset to sunrise, go
Sunrise to sunset, glow incandescently
As though to banish trailing shadows,
As the dark of which we spoke
Galloped after the huntress.
And next the tomcat rode

Behind the young, infatuated witch.
What a story that one will be,
But this end arrives and leaves
Nothing for now to say and surprise
That glory would last so long. I’d bow but for the stiffness
Overtaking my once moist and fertile self. Still, my thanks.
You’ve been great.
You are great.

Why We Bear Up, Why We Move On

for Dale, for Fred, for Carl, for T.J.,
for Michigan, for all of us

Sometimes we are the lone star,
blinking in the deepening night.
Sometimes we are vanquished,
reeling in defeat.
Sometimes shamed and crouching;
sometimes anonymous,
known only to ourselves.

Hard, hard spaces
badly fit for our eccentric shapes,
but there is
in our tender cores,
our transient glory,
our dreaming wonder,
a lusting to endure.