On Intimacy

Because in the darkness on a sea of sheets we cannot help 
remember even without remembering to, in the night

to step out of our bodies palming our way back to origins. 
I, blind and hungry, feel the shadows for curves, touching familiar

strange landscapes, the soft places I've always known
long before any knowing. Woman, her entirety

the tangible universe and the only god I could bury myself into.
Because the darkness keeps the secret that I could never 

fully grow apart. Helpless, I nestle on her warmth,
suckle at her breasts 

We must have met the same woman on the same day

An hour shy of a full day, I find the note you tacked on the wall
It has a picture of a tree where you met her, the woman sometimes
Called Fate. I reckon you noted your conversation about the same

Time I read in public, while accompanied by a painting, poem
I've written about her, and the bush, and the snake. Such happenstance
Did you ask her why she stayed where she'd go

Not for the first time I see the wall and knock at the cosmos divide: 
You, there
I, here

And our notes free on a boat bridge under moon and wind.


























          

Fate

When you meet a gypsy, on the road you begin to wonder
at your own rootedness, the way you have chosen to 
never stray at the straw path the maps gestured at with the stars.
They sometimes call it destiny.
Although whether it is the meeting her or the crossroad 
you may never know, standing at the foot of some bridge
you have constructed in mind. Fate

has a way of being many things at once strange and familiar
an open face of someone once dreamed about.
She has a tambourine, a ukelele, and a stray dog.
You have a compass, a dream, and a fear.

When you meet a gypsy, you wonder 
at your own rootedness. They sometimes call it
destiny.

If You Hire a Poet to Draw a Map

He will take liberties with the land. He’ll unwind rivers that
offend him. He’ll move mountain ranges that get in his way. He’ll
expand the coastline to make room for more otters and seals. He’ll
slide the equator a dozen degrees north so the winters won’t be
quite so harsh. He’ll rename major cities after the lovers of his
past. On the east coast there’s Penelope, so plump and polluted.
And Melinda in the west, awash in fragrant flowers. He’s likely to
add a few states. Some as small as a cafe. Others span great swaths
of the open sea. He’ll sketch in highways where it pleases him. The
black ones are designed for families and grandmothers traveling
alone. The green and orange roads are not for novices. They twist
and turn. Go underground for miles. Pass right over lakes. Then
the asphalt ends. You get out of your car. A farmer greets you by a
fence. He hands you a carrot. You ask the obvious question. And
he replies, Yes. This is the end of the orange road.

—David Shumate