Quarters

Here, where bed is. Photos line, as there

A blanket; here. Bed marks wither cotton

Into ground seams: You, [you.] When I sleep

Here lingering, a frame here where bed

Is a photo: Lela jolting from a supermarket

Door, your red hat tassels, just having let

Go. My thumb on your sleeve; my shivers

Fresh against (where) your marks as they are

A blanket. Here. Where fabric lingers. Now,

As they you, waiting. It is where our bed

Is: where there, you are: where supposed

It is warm as I leave my country

It is warm as I leave my country. Where the sea greets
a beach beaten with heat, footsteps mark. Slowly,
waves heave its traces back into its body,
groove through the water scintillating
across earth, concealing

secrets. Where once you and I strolled across
the shore, remnants linger densely
amid a breeze from another shore
of another place. Here, we dwell, our words
enfolding in their space the sun

cutting through sandcastles. Past
you say, pointing where we were
when we first kissed. There slowly, a castle
succumbs to the sea, the wooing leading
its chambers somewhere in the ocean

floor, slowly sinking from the surface. Warm
as I leave my country, I think. Outside
the rush of air through the plane as we pass away
from a pack of clouds. Past, recalling
you. Sun piercing through

the windows of a sandcastle. The canticle of your eyes;
How, as the sea, we hymn how once we were still, past
the present we elude. How presently we are gripped
by the past. How we recall once we were

not ourselves. It is warm as I leave,
cold as the engine’s whirr that stills
breath, space loosened only
by whispers. How cold outside
the clouds. How, in every, you are veiled,

peeking, your tears suddenly falling from
the sky as I leave where the sea greets
our traces lonely. It is as though we are
lightly on the sand, crumbling
as waves trace us back to the sea, cradling

our past, warmed as though enfolded
in a blanket. I look at the sea and think
of sadness. Not in the stars,
yet blanketing the earth, flowing
though from my cheek. Below,

the ocean grooves lonely to our hymn.

I am trying to write a poem for you,

I am trying to write a poem for you,
Of flowers and meadows that spring
From this page, into your heart
Where I bow heavily
As the fruits that humbly carry
Their weight, brought by a farmer's
Toiling. I write meadow, yet
What spurns from my mind
Is the breadth of a road
Cars piled as would the heads
Of maize during a summer day.
River, I write over. I am straining
To hear the birds, but instead I brave
The lyrics of a song I used to sway to
When I was a child: Love brings back
Old heartaches. A radio blasts across
The street, so I cannot hear the hymns
Of branches rubbing against the sharp
Rays of the sun. Here, in my study,
I cannot bear to give you
This drabble melding
With the heat of the streets. You
With the grace I pray for. This,
For there would be no other means
Of writing you, Other
than saying Here I am
Writing a poem for you,