Tense
       

Am smitten, I said, and the grass lay still,
and him on it, and I barely lied.

I couldn't stand his shoulders, how
they rounded, how the past tense

would have ached in them. The true word
never left its place beneath my tongue

as the sun cast down gold, September,
and the crickets sang,

telling us how the cold would come
from the warm tangle of our arms

and legs entwined in what?
We couldn't stop imagining.

I lay beside him, my hands cold,
wishing largesse from fall,

from the future, until our silence
opened the day wide (as lightning

does the sky sometimes) and he said
am? was? what does it matter with this thirst?

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Copyright © 2013 Cullen Bailey Burns All rights reserved
from Slip
New Issues Poetry & Prose
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission