Near Sacrament

Sometimes, it is a dream:
the robin’s slick song
paring back the morning—

it is not morning,
or, it is not like how morning comes,
as if water from a glass

tipped over, but it is how
I loved you, gradually
and then all at once.

Cherry plum trees
settling into their blush;
hills of sodden wheat;

this golden field
I can’t stop returning to:
you, naked, inching towards me,

an adaptation of tenderness
and force—
brief lights

that fall gently
from your hands.
If only the landscape were that simple:

pollen in the air, each breath
leaving the mouth like a man
pushed from a building—

no, no. He leapt.
To what do I owe your beauty
to which I never fully required,

and yet, while beneath you, is what bloomed.
This is how I began: as dirt
and desire, or simply a small river,

aimless,
but moving—
to where?