HUMAN CIRCLES
Tonight I can write the saddest lines
as I listen to the last white trill
of the lark,
the garden fountain spitting tears,
and remember all the jeweled colors
he gave me:
pinks more intense than pink,
yellows bright as licks of lemon,
reds deeper than the red-winged black bird--
that shock of scarlet like a surprised kiss,
a late period,
a shattered heart.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved him like a fever; he loved me
like a mayfly spanning only minutes,
five, maybe six.
Maybe it was for a whole white day
when snow piled around us
like a ring of crystal
that hardened into ice, brittle,
cold to the touch of skin, hair,
eyelashes, nostrils, cuticles,
follicles.
The human circles and lines
that understand first
what the mind can't gasp
because the heart heals more
slowly
than the brain,
because love is short,
and forgetting is long,
a long, long, long time ago when
I wrote the saddest lines
and called it therapy, veracity,
a poem.