For Zelie:

Love, be flagrant and delicate,
a riot of tact, the careless falling-
into-place exactness of it all.
Be the singular coupling, the lingering
lightning strike, the solemn giggle
loud-hushed, through the midnight wall.

Be the tink of ice cubes on the edge
of melting in an equatorial heat;
the sun, downed in one gulp, pops up
to a raucous creche of parakeet

and howler monkey: ancient cries,
today's news in the forest canopy,
same difference, the first time again. Us?

I-and-I, as Rastas say. That singularity.

Copyright © 2003 Philip Gross All rights reserved
from Mappa Mundi
Bloodaxe Books / Dufour Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission