My Only Love

My Only Love

           Even now you're gone you'll always be

                        My only love   Roxy Music

One

do you wonder what I do

alone    in this house

you picture me    waiting

like a widow in the dark

night no softer lover

could I call    you

at midnight    alone

in the narrow beds of our twenties

this is so much to ask

so much is expected

I see the room, white windows

toward the bay blue ocean

where I stand    asking

to step beyond this moment

I drink champagne

on the balcony    my desire

a leaf unfolding

in this I wait    I have forgotten

the feel of your hands    remember

only the scream as the hurricane

swept the bay there is no turning

from a hand closed against you

how quiet the night    how long

till I hear you    how far

must we go to be together

Two

in this silence absence taunts me

only the cats remain dreaming

I lay the table with lace

another silent house    funny

how I never told you I

never took you one place

I hadn’t been with another lover

I think I liked the repetition

the irony of standing

on the concrete dock with you

where I’d kissed my lover

on the lips on the dock

at exactly the same hour of twilight

alone    night engulfs me

I want something to take me

lift me into the silence of breath

of the dark    if I said

I would lay down with you

would I know

who I let go to

would your hands

name you