There, and Beside

After sex under soft and sanguine linens, one
lazily stays in a dream sleep and the other dresses
and steps quiet to the living room, secretly,
and stops and listens and watches because of
a wanted grasp towards how undecided snow
falls always into its place of silent belonging.

There, across the divisions of property lots, all
built from the understood vagueness of desire,
roads to be actually named with the body’s
‘arms’ and ‘legs’, lean torsos of yards
where squirrels float on weightless tails and
shake out the sighing ends of green walnuts
onto the mappings of the city planner; a domesticity

also with forks and knives that occasionally loiter
with steam and saliva, skins of baked potatoes,
sometimes called as imputations on plates that
are later filtered for tomorrow with water made
cold clear in fluoride and chlorine solutions,
then hand dried, cotton blended towels, physical
limitations, every evening broadcast on the news.

Its in this the lover stands inside these constructions,
sheltered from indefinite winds that run madly
along the edges of property lines, where
handfuls of winter brush roost beneath sight and
above the frozen white surface, emptied seed
pods hang in half cracked and dried effusions.

Husks, shells, drained without an understood meaning.

The other lover awakens, takes the empty hand,
and says, “hold on, night’s loss is coming, and is
where we should stay fiercely beside one another.”