[nor can love be proven except by act]

i beg of you: listen

one lives, as if by accident

want & not wanting,

to turn. who like the saint

by practice more

than anything else is faithful

to presence. the memory,

for example, survives but waves

goodbye vanished

is vanishing into these black

lines. nobody’s isotope.

nobody’s encore. nobody’s

trapdoor. spawn of unless

believe of almost

as in slantwise,

askew we’re destined you said

it nevertheless struggle

on, merge, make sense

tend to the near at hand

like the expensive

delicate ship, sailing on

or the rose shorn from its stem,

that does not know a tragedy

has occurred. love, the leaves die

but still the tree

is there, breathing.

[down/ pour]

rain shines everywhere, slicks

the surface of things:

a man unfolding a woman

into an ambulance, a rainbow

unspooling from a white crucifix

a traffic light swaggering

above to a blue sign that says

hospital › & a green sign

that says skiing ‹ . a chair scrapes,

a woman coughs, a dead

branch stretches, like an arm

across the window. the loops

& os of her name slop

across the dotted line as if

into a wound

i’m not sorry she says do you

believe me? sirens splash

& a frog sings back.

from shadow into sun,

the man smokes & paces, paces

& smokes. turn & turn again

a man breathing in & out,

like a tree, not yet

recognizing this as the story

of our life, the one we do not

want to hear but will do anything

to listen to. the present

tense unfolds then refolds

like a paper crane preparing

for flight, or tungsten

in a Christmas bulb just before

the oxygen rushes in, igniting

everything, spelling hope all in caps

all in white, while rainspit

hangs in the air, while here

women are dying & women

are giving birth, & a man thrusts

his weight inside the cementblock

that is St. Paul’s

from sun into shadow

thinking: step over & step lightly

& step into the fact