Running in the Rain

On Leslie, you,
Grinning in green
On green, you
Looked to me

Chattering
As we started
On some street in U City

Never quite finishing
What we began,

And how the days
Orbit the elliptical track
And gain momentum

Pouring over green
Pouring over like
Wild grass over the bank

I sat there solemn
Fiddling with Photoshop
Before I knocked the wood chips off

Carry her back to the car
Watch the college kids
Drool with the dogs

Carry her back to the car
Aged backward,
Lagging, catching
The air like a cape

Remember running in the rain
Remember these moments of beauty in pain

Remember the sunrise downtown
Like a lifetime on a smoke break

We sat on the patio furniture and
Crossed the empty streets at will and
Only we knew we were different

Neither perfect,
A thousand shattered pieces of china
Rearranged and pasted on the
Basilica ceiling, now

Glistening in emerald

Neither perfect
Still, in all of these mistakes,
Held together, foul notes
Lost to the whole

As I leapt backward from the platform
Fear of hesitation before
Fear of failure

Bracing for the hands or
The floor

Bracing for a cure
I swore
I felt the wild grass underfoot

I saw you in the clearing
I saw it all like lights and smoke and
Inhaled deeply and
Choked

We said the time aloud
It was a time
A time wrote down

Amidst the hundreds of thousands
Unrecorded, dismantled moments,
A time wrote down
A time wrote down