Excerpt
Gentleness

Back ‘n forth through time’s jigsaw
What lasts has an asking quality
& complicit resolve.
Understand we are more open
In our hold of lips to lips
& this secure state is that of grasses
growing back.
Somewhere there’s a river of plasma
Which spreads from tips & further in
Until these depths are like those born
Without pain thresholds.

No.

They can not tell where one body stops,
The other begins.

Skin is the most spiritual thing.
Touch, learning its regions, is never immune
Even when absence becomes touch
Of another form.

Is that one of the hardest contacts
Or just gentleness transmuted to
The smallest act:
Unbuttoning a button, slipping into lather,
Watering plants?

Darling, it is by these degrees
Lovers rise, outraged, to fight war.