no. 19      
         
         
         
  Yesterday, in the space of a street length
I gave my love away
to the leathery face of the man
rolling his life along in the saddle bags of his bike;
to the fretting lady fingering her lotto slip;
the the heavy framed eyes of a spike-haired woman
brandishing a hard shell;
to the tenuous gaze of someone's Oma with a walker;
and to the greasy brute who saw my eyes and smiled back.
I gave it to the gray horizon for letting blue
shine through in the midst of winter;
breathed it into the suddenly spring-like air
toward the frozen fingers of waiting trees
and into my hands like life and death.
It wasn't your missing love I found but my own,
the one that drifts into the clouds and rains down on strangers.
No longer left with the poverty of disappointment,
I breathed in the rich air
and found the love that belongs to you, just where I'd left it.
 
 
         
         
         
         
     

 

 
         
     

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