from Intergalactic Love Song

I find your stellar parallax,

the gold freckles of your spinning body

dizzying.  The distance between us

is not objective.  My gaze is inscribed

in you.  Your gaze is inscribed in me.

—

We lay beside each other,

the hem of my sleeve touching

its slender spiral arm.

Dew beaded the folded

flower petals.  Night closed us

in its pocket.  The Galaxy sighed.

We are so small, it said.  Soon

we will disappear.

Wind lifted itself from the yellow grass

and stole moisture from our hands.

I think it's not worth it

to love anything this much, I said

but it wasn't listening.

I am drifting slowly apart, it said.

The wind took hold of a stray hair

from beneath my collar

and stumbled forward through the grass.

—

My body too is mostly

empty space.  In the evenings, I go to the movies

alone, trade particles

with the man beside me.

—

At the onset of my journey

there was a voice.

I collected twittering stars,

I shook my paper sack

of smooth stones and shells.

Galaxy chirping with a tree-frog

in its heart, with a tribal band

of dust and ice. 

Galaxy my instinctual pillow,

my perpetual feast, I gobble down

the fear of being forgotten—

I wake to swallow

strips of cold, leftover steak

in the dark, exerting

such feeble mass.  Galaxy

with churchbells,

with the eye of a purple phlox,

which by being is both perfect

and flawed.  Galaxy with the

head of a moose, Galaxy moaning

with glaciers, the force

which compels matter to gather

is not enough, your grasp

on astral bodies is slipping.

You hide this truth

in your collection of stones:

the mode of all systems is

diminution.  Diminution, who whispers

me each night to sleep.  Lie down

with me, Galaxy, my cold, severed doll.

Someone is at the door.

We must be quiet and still.