Heart

BELATED VALENTINE

Days late this word and this word and all the ones
I think to make a part of these lines
and in thinking of apology I’m thumbing
through my fake dictionary,
the one in my brain, whose pages crisply turn
in the first breeze of spring,
this season that is not here yet,
not really, but there you go
in short sleeves,
your skin a dare to the world
and to me,
you have always been a dare,
like kissing butane
or shaving
with a chainsaw
or voting Republican.
So I am thinking of the many exquisite dangers
present in this thing
we have made,
this world, this life,
and everything
you have heard is true,
I can’t get next to you,
I’m no Al Green,
not even close,
not even falling like a dream into Memphis,
your city on a river,
not even knifing
down through clouds
to be hustled
through your unremarkable airport
could I be near you
there in that city
in which you toil,
where there is no better word
for what your days
comprise, trust me,
all afternoon I fossicked for some verb
in which
the honey of consolation abides
but I found nothing better.
So that is one
failure I give you,
to say nothing
of this one,
which makes two.
I could count higher
like a trained child
spooling numbers from her mouth like white ribbon.
I have all my fingers.
All my toes.
Maybe graph paper,
an abacus,
a calculator powered by the sun.
In the moon’s
splintered light
I could count
each mistake and by dawn be easily done.
This word and this word
say nothing,
they march across
the page
serving no purpose
but somewhere in all the ones I carry in my head
like stones,
like flowers,
there is the right one
and when I find it
I will not wait, I will give it to you for always.