Your railroad gate

AFTER SUMMER

The moon will never be my Duncan yo-yo

though we whispered it would,

some summer, some drenched season—

you’d hold my hand, frame it

against the moon while in the half-dusk

fireflies bobbed, flashing

their ache, the semaphore

of lust. That was not a long time ago

but as long as we live

one picnic in darkness

begins to lessen, to compress, to rank with dust.

I’m trying to learn

how to live like flint—

to give fire each time I’m struck

by the cellular

strangeness of history,

to imagine Tokyo beset by spring, by petals,

by diffident squalls

of rain, trains beneath us

in arterial velocity

going everywhere, nowhere,

all at once. That’s no surprise

when I’m walking

home with food

and the light left

on flutters like moths

in a jar, like your heart beneath curved bone.

It’s no surprise

when the rain-slick knob

spins in my hand

and the hunger

mewls away

until my body seems to lift from itself

like a bird over water

is beautiful

somehow.