A Poem

Your Second Self

Unspool your second self in me,

in all my uncharted places, the tunnels

of cacophony I keep quiet. My mind

is undefended but not unwalled. My body,

on nights like this, becomes a shiny

indention in the landscape, a pockmark

filled with rain, my footprints

leading home. I don’t know the way

my hands move over your hips, but you do.

When the strong wind blows

we retreat indoors into what might be

my house or yours, which is really no one’s

house that appears on no map.

The great writers of the world

tell us what life is, how strict, straight,

and broken, like a fallen tree at the end

of our yard, but only you give me a reason

to cut my way through it. We cannot find

the voices—our own echoes in our halls—

that call to us, least of all in each other’s

ears, where we are both lost in the husky

sound of breeze. The world entertains

an olive branch extended from a computer

screen. Mass transit passes through every eye.

Machines find themselves in people

as people find themselves in machines.

The city loses its grip on sanity.

Angels uninterested in the lives of men

are men engrossed in the lives of angels.

You take each piece of this land from me

hoping someone sees that your eyes

are the color of pine needles.

I love all the oaks of the forest stretching

back to my birth in pictures, with your

fingers like branches running through

my hair.