I have fallen in love with softness

(have I done the right thing?)

With the pull of the evening’s low tide

The ashen debris of the fireside

With all that hides

and bides

its time

 

In emptiness,

between the world and its shadow.

 

Soft lisp slipping its lullaby

beneath my skin,

over my stilted pulse

my steely veins;

whispering its softness into song,

trying to melt me from inside out.

 

Have I done the right thing?

You are so gentle I forget myself.

 

But sometimes I think I would rather die erect than

collapse; I turn away from your face,

then remembering the feeble, lightless death

of the slug I stepped on last week,

Know I will not share its hideous fate.

 

Am I a right thing?

Would I surrender the strength of my spine;

do I dare to recline?

Do I dare let the poem go silent,

or must I resuscitate its breath,

every time?

 

I scorch myself into thought.

This will kill me someday;

my vertebrae refuse to melt. They

ignite

 

Instead.

And you

are a hundred spills of water,

heavy, blue, blue. Meet, and

You dampen the syncopated beat of

my heart. Where we come

face-to-face.

 

To lose is such a heaven.

I have fallen in love with your dim,

your mute, your tender,

The muffled hum of our hymn,

I think. (I acquiesce,

finally.)

 

In wintertime, at the frozen river

where I watch the whiteness gather,

The snow touches the ground and makes a sound,

I am sure of it. Too soft to hear,

but there.