Two Springs, by Richard Linker

Spring breeze played at the window this way once

When I lay spooned with John, and far from us

The ocean pumped the vast breath of the air,

Poetries of salt and temperature its genius.

My eye wandered his hair, the back of one ear.

Against my chest I felt his breath press and withdraw,

The physical fact of him impossibly true.

Now Spring enters again, stirring breath in that curtain-tranced day

Of slip in, suck out, belly and sway at the game of loving this world,

Eternal in its marking off time.

How good, that sweet breeze, lucid, watery air

Bearing a voice, laughter, lilac and dogs

As if a quiet Eden lay beyond, unobtrusive in its bounty.

Was I ever as peaceful as the smell of his hair enticed me to believe?

Yes —the body does not lie, but hopes.

He slept; the room, charged with our presence,

Took light at the windows like a great thirst satisfied,

And every detail was clear to me

Through to the still water at the heart of things.

Then I wrote “god’s balding postcard dome,” and all of it,

It seemed, contained within that room where we were shooting stars

As Pan opened up again his ageless rites among the flowers.