The White Lilies
As a man and woman make a garden between them like
a bed of stars, here
they linger in the summer evening
and the evening turns
cold with their terror: it
could all end, it is capable
of devastation. All, all
can be lost, through scented air
the narrow columns
uselessly rising, and beyond
a churning sea of poppies--
Hush, beloved. It doesn't matter to me
how many summers I live to return:
this one summer we have entered eternity.
I felt your two hands
bury me to release its splendor.
~ Louise Glück, The Wild Iris (London, 1992)
I remember you best as the man
asleep on my chest, warm breath somehow
the exact opposite of sex. How I came
to know you take your tea with honey
if I got any. Sugar? Then nothing. It's true
we teach each other how we want
to be held. You brimming hot--another mug
I had to shuffle-step up a narrow stair. Once
right after waking and always again, but decaf
before turning in. Because loving you
was another impossibility, who was I
to notice when it happened? When it did,
it bloomed in me, milk in the steeping dark.
~ Robert Wood Lynn, Mothman Apologia (New Haven, 2022)
