Again Alone With a Onetime Love

Were we to take perhaps
Each other in our mouths
It could not be the same.
Indifferent seasons, mutual fluctuations
Of belly and limb, depleted stores
Of passion and ideal preconception
Preclude any surety of memory.

What does it matter who
Is more or less otherward than half the way
Or that our flesh lacks that familiar response?
Of what importance the distance there
To here, the wreckage and romantic debris?
Come please kneel with me now

On the brink of several salvations.
We are but two clinging
Penitents in the darkness
Reciting worn rosaries
Of erstwhile desire
And diminished ability.

michael s. queen
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