in that certain land
untouched by solar gain
not mars, not earth
and not that planet love
her hot terrain
the last we'll visit
in that pure land reflected
from sequestered seas
themselves refracting skies
we screwed unthinkingly
and grunted with surprise
when it hurt or didn't
and with new positions
and permissions
explored
improbable new passages
through time and its corollaries
then afterwards
i heard a pendulum
whistling, near
you heard rain
we left the house
upon the hour
and in the woods
we found a small breeze
sly, agnostic
two-hoofed
smoking a cheroot
fingering a dryad
its rising fur
said photograph me
see where my liquor breath
rots leaves
and then we're slick and running naked
scared
and start an argument
that can't be finished
about the sacred
and profane
I grid my points
with lightning straws
through which to suck
epiphanies
you match temerity
with ambiguity, tug me
back through that
looking glass
peppered with the cracks of dreams
through which we stepped
like sleeping glue
possessed, to
a desert where a pyramid
of wood chips
is lit by sunset
an annunciation
I must forget
like rembrandt's meat
first a splayed
ox
and then
soft skinned dowagers
cleaved from their
husbands, hooked
by time
and torn in their
surrendering