I am, in the moment’s mindless rhythm,
far from perfect.
Far from escaping, for the two of us,
a six-second quake of perfection.
Six seconds to stir life’s beginning,
middle and end.
Six seconds to unravel life, yours, mine, ours.
*
How many others, young, unwed,
the nameless fixer fixed, in a half-vacant
walk-up in Harlem, I can’t say.
By morning, the ER doc has dammed
a corpuscular stream he knows is part
of a lie he chooses to forget.
Love’s fugue, we learn, too perfect
the first time, sings its last for you
in the imperfect fixing.
*
We forgive ourselves, we said.
As if youth could rewrite the song,
start the music over.
Guilt, I discover, is a fugue of body
and moment, the mind practices
to perfection.
Perfecting the end is hardest.
