Use

By now you are used to the use I used to make of you.
And what you miss most is my tenderest misuse of you.
I miss it too.

How it Felt Last Winter While I Was Creating the Kingdom of Ends

I have ascended into winter,
ancient, clean and bright,
thinking now of summer sounds and of
the memory of our memory and of
that mixed tape of sighs pondered,
the soundtrack of our lives.

When the days grow dim
cold ways sink their grim teeth
into my thoughts.
And remorse is all I can muster
these short days, these latter
latter days.

Milk Down in My Belly

Do you remember how it came?
Like the patter of the rain?
First soft and then insistent?

I'd been practicing till I learned
most every trick used to discern
the dusk hours from the twilight.

I asked myself, I asked and asked
as if my soul were looking glass
and not the one who's looking.

But this strange peace, it laughed and taunted,
distracted me from what I wanted,
put things another way.

Smelling of sandalwood, feeling bourgeois
bringing dignity to ever new horrors
like suicide and sex abuse,

it felt like milk down in my belly.
Cats land lightly, cats land deftly
and I had landed soft.

Oh, would she stay? Oh, would it last?
Of course the course was just a class.
I don't need this forever.

Gently then, I let it go.
The wind, balloons, the melting snow
all love us in their leaving.

If it was God whose breath I felt
who knows our needs and gives us help,
I thank him for this extra.