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LIVING ON EARTH

Part of the celestial sky known as the sea.

Where there’s little of Earth

and nothing of us as these forms.

In the animal soup of time beside the Water Bearer

and the Great River. They’re up there for the lost

with Polaris. In the oceans. At home.

In your own body which is mostly water

and mostly not yours. Not even tonight

while you’re in it. When another body

sleeps alongside all your want.

What does the moon know of our language,

our care for its perceived loneliness

which may be its one joy.

Where would you find love if not on the earth?

As if we should be permitted elsewhere.

As if we understand our own wars,

our reasons for fleeing, forgetting—

the history we do not allow ourselves to imagine

and the lives we refuse to know,

which are often our own. I think of you here,

where you haven’t been in years.

There’s a flaw in the wood of the door

or my own madness that welcomes the wind

although it is summer, although I am winter.

You could see the sea from the desert

on a night when no one comes to harm you,

an evening when bombs go off somewhere as planned.

We could be letters. Sent here

to warn each other of a much better time.

We could be no one. And for nothing.

For what?