East Across the Atlantic
And then we’re ploughing the cloud road,
the rumpled ocean cirrus cover.
Halfway across, the sea-floor trenches
become visible on the screen, long jags,
cumulonimbi shadows between
the berms. I used to think it was something—
everything—to go from one continent
to another. But now that my darling is getting
a moment here, an hour there
in some other world, I do not know
for sure anymore that there aren’t some locations
which are not on the time we’re on. What does it
mean, “imaginatively true.” When he says we are the
same person, now—and we are
love, and we will always be
together, I say yes. I may not
be with him when he dies, but I see it sometimes,
his face a cream-on-the-top yellow,
his mouth open, his big chest
not moving, he is the man I love
best in this life, he is my bigger than life,
my deep singer, he is the whale and the whaleroad,
the baleen and krill, he is the frankincense
and ambergris, the spermaceti and myrrh.
