Maybe nothing is eternal, just the ever-present now,
where little of consequence happens until it’s
long gone by, the future forever a distant dream.

And what of that hazy past, our past, returning
after so long away, with all its misdirection,
indecision, joy, and yes, I’ll say it now, love?

The years slithering off into high grass, the sorrows
mostly forgotten with the mattress dragged onto the
cool tile floor of the airiest room during a swampy

stretch of July, box fan droning like a crop duster,
the raccoons making a racket of the dumpster lids by streetlight,
the mash notes left in work mugs for the other to anticipate, find,

and read discreetly off in a quiet corner, the nights
together like small universes spinning, those precious
astral weeks, never to return, not that we could have known,
not that knowing could have changed anything.