don't know whats wrong with that fella but don't the suit fit nice

He thinks, ‘So this too, side by side –
or at least following down
this same path together, not against,’
With the hope of the hopeless,
confined by need.

It is they two again,
in the new age of the world
even though once she had thought,
‘Look how he would make me his statue,
when I cannot be static, idle, idolized
I must go away,’
and she’d fled wide,
and come back,
alighting home no more wise
essential, spent,
solitary with longing.

The pattern of life has fallen so low,
and been beaten to dust,
even the stones are beaten to dust.
But side by side,
these proud works that we’ve made
the landmarks of our spent road
still stand,
in your mind’s eye, faded, familiar,
not quite forgotten.
He recognized
these upward-peering notions you have buried,
sheltered under your skin,
half hidden but not excised,
in waiting with the longing
that you’ve not quite outgrown,
you are careful
but they still spill your blood on the floor.

He says, “Weren’t we so very innocent then,
didn’t we know we would not change a thing?”

So this, now, too, side by side,
to be torn asunder there
or be combined and combust.
This, like a courtly dance,
with whispers and pretense and poison,
but at least it’s not apathy,
which seeps, like water seeps ink off the page.

It smells like damp, and it smells like smoke
but it’s not quite old,
so we can’t guarantee our petty demise,
and whatever comes down with the rain and the ash
will be too necessary
dogged
inevitable
to be overthrown.

Yet with all your forward, striving gaze,
your feet may get mired
in the mud and the bones,
remnant regrets,
poor, lingering bones.
The green is the green in the faded evening,
the road curves around
where our old reasons are buried
and the breath of their ghosts has not yet been stilled.

He warns her, “I can’t pick my words off the trees,
Or out of the cracks on the floor.”

There is sunlight and shadow on the lines
he writes, his hand on the page,
the lines of his studious face
shabby, too familiar,
still himself,
even though she has long wondered,
finally borne home on the tide.

She can see, in this light,
that they’ve been working in circles
eye to eye, in fumbling two step
but never nearer,
never willing to do the obvious thing
anxious, and caught in a steady state.

She says, “When did we become so unsure,
wasn’t I was sure I knew, before?”

And he thinks, ‘I don’t remember ever knowing,’
doesn’t answer,
lets the white walls answer for him,
for both of them, too, will become only dust.

And she will be the willow,
and he will be the swan,
and she will stand still
while he climbs the machinery of years,
and he will be the beauty,
and she will be the scenery,
so that they may change places for a while,
and both can be re-acquainted with air.

She asks him as they walk out of the door,
just to show that she knows,
“Well, I suppose, this too, side by side?”

Tomorrow he may answer,
“Of only this I am sure,”
or he may not,
if she and the white walls would prefer.

We would be beholden to love, as you say,
and stand out in that field, bare and unarmed
and helpless before it,
having given over all defense, and laid aside
every shielding denial
and you may find it demeaning, alarming
too great a risk answered only by such an intangible reward.
I think you have only known hearth-kin love and
that is a fat, docile, drowsy, dun-colored thing,
of comfort and common pleasantries,
of small pleasures given at little cost,
and that is nice enough.

But oh,
only we shall be fine fair things, that glisten in the sun
we shall be as gentle woodland creatures that slip
through passages of trees, unclothed, unwary, mute,
half glimpsed by stamping travellers in sturdy boots who pause
in the cool wood but do not linger.
We shall be as wild things, not pinned to this world
and unheeding of its strictures
and, with teeth and claws made ready, proceeding outward,
passed through the outmost gate, broke free.
We shall not believe we are too wise to be so moved,
for we will be as the lovers that the gods did bless
with a caress of their golden hands atop our heads
and under their protection, stand unflinching,
We shall be unscrimping as children,
who live with lavish wonder,
who do not expect harm and are unharming,
and we shall not shy back from the sight
of our misshapen, mouldering,
briny hearts, long left hidden and unattended
but cradle them between us with greatest care.
We shall be
of the earth and from our great vantage, above it,
and settling in, descending down to our loamy rest,
we shall not even then be parted,
and be never bound and never made to shoulder the yoke
of dutiful forbearance, never as those penitents,
harnessed to one another, who fear to speak and be heard
and instead are mummified by the winding sheet of secrets kept,
and kept, until they spoil.
We shall be as every encompassing notion,
and every disparate, fading note and the silent breathing between--

We shall be all of these,
if only we may at first begin.