Night Swimming

This is not a place for lovers.

It seems as if God stopped at the side of the road,

To take a piss, leaving a shallow,

Muddy, hole in the parched earth.

Under pockets of sky I tread

Two miles to the waterhole’s cakey rim,

Delivered by wheat and the smell of warm cow breath.

He is here, waiting.

He undresses slowly.

My fingers cling to the oval button of my sweater,

My mouth gapping open in disbelief,

Carved out of wood, a figurehead of ship,

Trapping pieces of moon and horseflies.

Tonight, even Sappho would have wept.

Her tears chart us on a river to where

Rivers all lead to other rivers, leading to the place between spaces,

Between other spaces—

Places, where only love and water stretch

Freezing between cracks to expand new geographies.

And morning will find us.

Like miracle, you will leave me.

The low slung crone of the dairy rig

calls me back home.

And as with all great loves, this one dies.

But the ache is not the death —

it is, the leaving.