Tell me
I am a garden, the odd path
 
out of the forest, thorns. The floor
of our stone house
 
loves you
as I love your morning
 
weight, evening lightness.
We harvest the mist
 
over four lakes. We envy
beech leaves,
 
which won’t escape their branch
and fall.
 
It is January. You dive
for lake pearls,
 
freshwater assassins. What
would you have me
 
tell you? The black socks
were a joke. The cork
 
dried out. The air
still wet after rain. We hide
 
the shoe in our sycamore
and feast
 
on solitude. We envy mallards
traipsing
 
the lake’s thin ice.
Last ice. You
 
unstitch
your shirt, my sheet,
 
this poem.
At midnight, we thirst,
 
we wake and pace the halls.
Rose glass, ache,
 
pewter, moss: I fail
the window’s art. You wait
 
out the frost. Tell me
how to undo you.