We are not Kissing and the River

tricks the boat. Even at night,
colors freeze when they would
rather bleed. He likes delay,

he says, the long ascent to sex.
[first his finger to his lips]
He of the somewhere-wadded-up

mainsail, half hard and too tired
[to the knuckle now] to try—
when in doubt he demurs

then dissolves, spooked
as I and twice as strange.
The glass we handed back

and forth sits on the sill:
mouth- and fingerprints
overlap, more reasonable

as a form of mimesis [out now
and glistening] than simple
trajectory—and what about

the bridge, under which
the boat [back in, slowly,
slowly] has slipped, its

chain of lights, distorted
by the edge of the glass,
just now turned on?