To the Mason

1.  The Mortar Between Us

      Skin on skin

              the silence of NOW—electric!—

                       is his in-

      effable hand held

              barely breathing

                        to the skull of me

      —and the thought that to think is to be alive

               dies wordless.

2.  The Border Between Us

      My shirt

               stained with sweat & soap

                        smells of you;

     and my chest

               all week

                        heaves through days

                                redolent with what you’ve left:

     your every little wall

               bears its weight on me

                        while the heart of the matter

                                of which you’re mute

                                      bolsters ‘til next week comes;

    melting hinges of a door

               will open the door, I say, knowing

                        that what you’re building with me

                            brick by brick

                                     may take your goddamned lifetime

                                             —or the hinges freeze from under-use.

Coda: Lodestone

Magnetic eyes plead discernment.

              And alee the seaswell of unfathomable weeps, I

descried a life for whose pain I oathed my own.

        Not ‘til your eyes turned—leaving me in the dark deep—did

I know the weight of life misprized.

              You were my anchor. Now I—:

                                                                —mooring unmoored.