Maple Viewing

Drums in the garden
Leaves turning colors of koi
Your heart against mine.

After Canlis

I approach my shadowy self in the plate glass,
touch warm to cold fingertips and join,
gazing out over the city. Amber lights and white,
syrupy in the rain, slide the streets below.
“Put Bardahl In Your Oil” flashes red and resolute
like fatherly advice. The drawbridge is going up,
creak almost audible, lights of each side
slowly separating.

You come to me; I see you mirrored in the window
before my eyes lower at your touch, the traffic
of my nerve endings
scattering a blaze of light. We keep very still. Sinatra
joins us gradually, layering sound
upon our lovers’ silence. Our window selves
can’t hear him, we are caught
in one another, electrical current
of sense, sight of our selves slipped into one
reflection, city laid out before us, bejeweled and glowing,
the bridge comes back down, its two
lights merge, painstaking and achingly become one.

At Sea

Her home port is under construction,
candy-striped cranes and oxyacetylene
torches sparkling supernatural in the dark,

so the ferry must wait her turn
for a slip. She describes slow circles.
Lights slide listlessly by. A mother

and daughter in mutual orbit
on the dirty confetti linoleum tiles
of the passenger deck: The toddler turns

her head coquettishly, makes a mission
of tipping up the seats of all the folding
chairs, giggling. Coming and going. It is hard

to see at first that the mother is weeping.
The moon is full and cold. Tears
make their unassuming way down her face

and are slid aside with fingertips when the child
isn't looking. She turns circles.