Animis Opibusque Parati
Once fluid—I loved the Carolinian slope of your jaw,
eagle eyed, a tiny child, sex-crazed, elongated like
the taught stretch of a drum, thrumming inside
the softness of a thigh,

and I tried to keep you out of this poem,

failed
miserably,

still thinking about the shared sip of beer,
the weight of waiting for the phone call,
how we sat

looking at
and through each other
at the table in the bar,
accommodating, ignoring the phone,

but when I was a child, I dreamed
this, dreamt of you
even before I understood, wrote the
word Alaska long before we
ever went there, cradled sound
like a child,

feed it from my breast,

and we sat together, leaning
forward across the table,

and it would be weeks, days,
and years even
before we reminded each other
of that night,

unobserved, embracing in an
empty parking lot.