Tree Buds and Afternoons

Nine or so years ago
my hands were stars,
convinced they were
waxed paper, folding
over and over,
like moth wings, bent
on shaking all their dust.

When I remember you,
there are smells, the way
spring smells, like apologies
and lamplight through early
morning blankets -- or --
there is a hum, like laundry
and the breeze in my skirts
-- or -- there is a glow,
like your fingers on my
grandfather's guitar,
like tinnitus, like the space
in your voice where my name
used to be.

Tell me again how to say
goodbye to something I
forgot instead of forgiving.
You were always under
something, the trees, my
shirt, a lie, and I never knew
you the way I wanted to,
the way you knew my hands,
the way my hands knew
your ribs so well.

Sonnet I (Petrarchan)

If all the world were softness of your arms
Then never would I need for comfort more.
The vastness all of sea and sky and shore
Turned calm, with serpent veins that swim, though harm

No creatures 'neath the milky film and form

Of skin that swells in shallow waves. The roar

Of torrents falling 'pon the land may pour
On ears of bird and beast, yet leave all warm.

For life without your forest glen of chest,
Should prove too harsh, too granite-like, too dark.
The silence there, devoid of heart in breast,

Too empty to sustain a shoot or stalk,

And missing lungs and breath, leave winds too stark
For me, now loving more, to live with less.