Two nighttime sonnets
Having found it’s possible to loosen
my hold on which of ‘you’ and ‘I’
refers to which of us, who call
ourselves the names of ‘lover’
and ‘beloved,’ offering these words
up like branches broken from oak,
it only takes a slip of the tongue
on the apex of autumn,
pronouncing the name of that tree
instead of the dark brown that it strikes
in the back of your iris,
to seize: which of us goes by which.
--
What else
stops so suddenly
but the night?
An oak tree cracks under the moon
and somebody else is awake.
Only Love
can be the measure
of that instant.
I wake up
in your eyes
and find the second person
willing to answer to ‘who?’
Nighttime
is the sill
of the window of your face,
catching the tremulous shadows
of your nose, your brows,
letting that heavy frame rest,
and when those shadows
pass from one cheek
to the other
during the deepest hour
when even the trees are sleeping,
only Love will shift its weight.