I'll Be Home: A Flamingo Valentine (7)
After
the nights, the years of pin-small
dramas and desire, here's
love
for marveling, love to depend on
finally, in these refrains re-set,
in
all of these lines I've tried two years
to learn to tell you,
even
as you, Elizabeth, are waking refreshed
and listening, pleased
by
this rock-gray morning lifting over us,
by this rock-grey totem
a
wooden sea-bird sits beside, musing
the carved tusk-fish
your
grandpa brought home from Alaska,
and this grey light --
brightening
over us -- this softness
returned to crests,
and
crescents of light I trace, discovered
behind a knee
and
running along to the first softening,
to all of this firmness tensing,
that
seems to like
the touch.
