Accretion

“Where the woman in love is dew,
we are a plummeting stone.”

--Rainer Maria Rilke

Having never been a woman.  Having never been
in love with the dew.  Having been neither
stone nor its plummeting.  Having been loved,
in love.  Having been awake in the presence

of stone, of dew.  Having been awakened by
love’s plummetless stones, kisses planted
on eyelids like grapes.  Having been alive, awake
when love awoke, I can say I have fallen.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Tomorrow the grey geese pilot their formations south,
we pick up after the party where we said too much,

an old brown bear digs out the last late grubs, beds
down.  Tomorrow we remember to throw our metal

fists into the gears of the machine, to buy compact
fluorescent bulbs and apples grown in Washington,

waxed in Mexico, at the corner store in Eugene.
Tomorrow we devise new tenses for the things

that we will never get around to: calling our dead
brothers, dismantling the IEDs, acknowledging our

complicity.  Because today rushes up to us like
a flock of fleeing children, noisy and immediate,

smacking the world around with their little brown
fists. Today we do everything we can to hear them,

maybe feed them.  Tomorrow, we sigh to each other
through the gathering fog, there might just be time to love.