J. Tarwood
Girl Watcher
Pale in summer skirts,
young women walk
away, saying
Listen.
I used to want
in the simplest way,
loud as a boy
with his first drum.
Is gazing grazing?
Heart levitates
for other men’s daughters,
their steadfast abracadabra
blessing breath.
Eternity, Absence
(After Huchin)
You don’t know,
but perhaps once you saw
how things leaving
might appear to be staying.
Always you yearned
to be rain, cloud
awakened, reason itself
greening grass.
Me, I yearned
to be your path,
proper dirt for the shoeless,
no cuts, no scratches.
Always you yearned
to be a river without
channels, dream wicked
and startling, loose
blade of sleep
clattering across rooftops.
Me? A hand
on your wrist, a whisper
in your ear, skin sequence
for winter caressing
your back, kissing your navel.
Impossible embrace:
me: ash: you: water.
At best a fragment
of you, at best
a trail without tracks.
Our damned truth:
you’re always leaving
yet seem to be staying.
Yes. Always you yearned
to be rain. Me, the
least: the path transmogrifying
in your storm.
