of figs dripping in Adriatic heat,
in the mulberry-stained
strings of a mandolin,
rowdy goats, vines ablaze in autumn,
and the jewel-colored lining
of a dark wool coat. I love you
in day arriving all-at-once after
smooth night cracks open, and spring
that can’t make up its mind—
will it come, will it try today?
I love you in a painting I saw once
of wondrous anatomy—
how the heart filled the chest
and had to be cradled—
and the forty frescoes
of the Vatican Map Gallery,
all cities south of Rome
announcing their names
upside down. I love you
in the sound of geese
before I see them,
the same beach walk three times
in one day, in the octopus—
den festooned
like a holiday parade
as she begins to waste away.
And in your father,
clipped cinnamon saint,
who puts fish sauce in every recipe,
keeps seven hives
but doesn’t eat honey, releases trout
to a stream as though
it’s a bassinet of reeds.
Our boys, we miss the mark
constantly. Still, I love
how you’re every point
on a compass,
and we’re like the Pineapple Express—
I’m often hot, he’s mostly
heavy—but not
in our overwhelming arrival, in how
we circled and circled
before making landfall.
