Pockets of Desire, Surfacing

Stuck at the intersection, I glance to see the lovers in the car

next to me, one’s head beneath the other’s, bobbing as a buoy

does on rough ocean; his hair chestnut, rogue grays

of early 30s, his head an albatross diving toward rapid

water, then back up with the seamlessness of a dancer’s jeté.

The driver ’s Adam’s apple, sharp, bent at a guillotine angle,

Judith beheading Holofernes, Capocchio’s neck under Gianni’s teeth.

I see the inhale of his throat’s hard swallow.

Who have they been to be this now: unable to wait for home,

rushing worship at the red light.

At the hotel’s uppermost level, we bowed

to the grand opera of a foreign city’s concrete

that we surveyed through sheer curtains, as if from a mezzanine,

and just like as from a mezzanine, forgot that those below

could just as easily look up to see: your shirt, resurrecting

your chest, and I, crouched in the corner playing at knots.

Who I have been has brought me to this worship:

like a brushstroke moves light across canvas,

you moved toward me, and tightened the nylon

to my thigh until they were one skin.