Poetry is my method of memory.
I question what I am really doing in Virginia
Where I can't see the moon and often
My melancholy gets the better of me.
Last night in Cheswicks I watched him
With a beer in my hand
And wondered if he really didn't dream
We left and I teetered to the boat.
Half drunk, half-naked we swam in the Potomac
And I looked for him in the black water
By the buoy, the bow, the stern.
A cautious kiss, my body resting against his.
Drove to his house, where he is
Tempted to sleep on the couch, saying:
"a million and one reasons"
I demand just one.
"I don't know you" he answers
and I move from his side of the bed to the other
wearing his shorts and shirt
and we lay together in a tangle of maybes,
covered in possibility.
Touching his back, taut, tanned, I want his hands
To know me.
In the morning, I watch his eyes
Dancing beneath oily lids, his throat rumbling
And when he wakes, I whisper,
"you do dream."
copyright eak 1998
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