This is not the map. Every
part of this, the small touch
as you pass behind me,
the bread set out upon the table,
the look across
a steaming pasta pot
is the love
itself. No map I've ever read
has the weight of a grown man,
thighs strong enough to tread
the road in long strokes toward
home. This is solid ground,
real earth, a high wind to
slowly strip us of what
we hold between, unsure,
so that we can find
each other in the dark by
feel, knowing one another's territory
like a path walked often
wide awake.
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to The Poems.