under

WHETHER

Inside the ghost of a lemon grove I stood.

Or seemed to, each early morning

the elevator bore me up to where you taught,

where the woman who cleaned

had come before with her sacrament

of false citrus. Mysterious machine—

at least to children unable to quite discern

whether they rose or fell,

until the latent lurch, the stammered stop

and the doors shuddering

and the translated world returning.

But, a desperate world.

And it was there we would kiss like shadows.

Or like fools. Of need,

we had need. In that air we made

a vault of breath and motion and

constraint. In that air: persimmon seeded,

a garden wrapped in light

like bark, and both of us unsure

unto the last fossa within

whether we trespassed or whether welcome

walled us in.