how once we crouched naked on an outcrop

of rock, the moon huge and untouched

above us, speechless. Now we talk

about everything, incessantly,

our moans and grunts turned on a spit

into warm vowels and elegant consonants.

We say plethora, demitasse, ozone and love.

We think we know what each sound means.

There are times when something so joyous

or so horrible happens our only response

is an intake of breath, and then

we’re back at the truth of it,

that ball of life expanding

and exploding on impact, our heads,

our chests, filled with that first

unspeakable light.

AS IT IS

As It Is

The man I love hates technology, hates

that he’s forced to use it: telephones

and microfilm, air conditioning,

car radios and the occasional fax.

He wishes he lived in the old world,

sitting on a stump carving a clothespin

or a spoon. He wants to go back, slip

like lint into his great-great-grandfather’s

pocket, reborn as a pilgrim, a peasant,

a dirt farmer hoeing his uneven rows.

He walks when he can, through the hills

behind his house, his dogs panting beside him

like small steam engines. He’s delighted

by the sun’s slow and simple

descent, the complicated machinery

of his own body. I would have loved him

in any era, in any dark age; I would take him

into the twilight and unwind him, slide

my fingers through his hair and pull him

to his knees. As it is, this afternoon, late

in the twentieth century, I sit on a chair

in the kitchen with my keys in my lap, pressing

the black button on the answering machine

over and over, listening to his message,

his voice strung along the wires outside my window

where the birds balance themselves

and stare off into the trees, thinking

even in the farthest future, in the most

distant universe, I would have recognized

this voice, refracted, as it would be, like light

from some small, uncharted star.

Fast Gas

for Richard

Before the days of self service,

when you never had to pump your own gas,

I was the one who did it for you, the girl

who stepped out at the sound of a bell

with a blue rag in my hand, my hair pulled back

in a straight, unlovely ponytail.

This was before automatic shut-offs

and vapor seals, and once, while filling a tank,

I hit a bubble of trapped air and the gas

backed up, came arcing out of the hole

in a bright gold wave and soaked me — face, breasts,

belly and legs. And I had to hurry

back to the booth, the small employee bathroom

with the broken lock, to change my uniform,

peel the gas-soaked cloth from my skin

and wash myself in the sink.

Light-headed, scrubbed raw, I felt

pure and amazed — the way the amber gas

glazed my flesh, the searing,

subterranean pain of it, how my skin

shimmered and ached, glowed