Memory At These Speeds

Jane Miller (1996)

I love these hours alone I do

                         not

                               like them. Like them, I am

slow to divine

                               meaning from change, meaning

I love you & remembering

                                                 waking next

to you like a white gull against a white sky

                               become blue

I feel detached, although I realize

this is the drift of happiness it is not

                               my choice

                                                 yes I like you

for it. Faith

                            for this moment is living

with a fear

                               I will lose you or myself,

   each arousing

                               the other,

eternity!

                               that spectacular hour in the afternoon

             when you arrive & suck me

                                     as if it were through time

we are reconciled

                                        or in dream,

             the desert we return to

                heaven

                                     all that disappears

                when we look back,

                                                 for this time we are lovers we are

moved by the sea

                                     in a studio with aqua floorboards

             & white lamps now like stars inhabiting a pattern

                                     now random.

Never let ourselves be subject

                                                 to either dependence again

or pain. Where once there were so many

   words we had to choose

                                                 between us,

your sentence effortless as mine is fair.