Panama #2

I am
reminded of you while
reading Jack Gilbert, skating
by bus through teeming
mountains. The volume is
yours: one of the innumerable
borrowed and few I have
yet to destroy. There
are depressions though
on the sheen of
the front cover. Evidence
of a shuddering carelessness
endemic to me, my propensity
to set things down
so hard without
even looking.

When you
still loved me I would lie
in your bed while you
got ready to go out drinking, reading
poems one at a time. I wanted
to feel the weight of those words
on my tongue, dissolving
like hard candies to ropes
of sucrose that would thread
between my teeth. I never
understood why you would prefer
films to photographs
when isn't it always motion that turns
everything to shit?

Now I see
your perspective. Collections
bring cohesion, you were always
the most beautiful while dancing
and without narrative
what remains is a vase
without flowers--that sort of felt
idealism you never
believed in anyhow.

But darling, the same way
I pray it is not a sin to
read while so much rushes
past the windows, I pray
you were wrong about certain things.

That Panama is nothing
like Belize. That I did
love you even in the moment
when my hands so deftly
pulled us apart. That I will
not shatter the next
beautiful thing
I touch, and how
maybe there is
a pair of kid gloves
hidden somewhere
in your deepest
chest of drawers.