James Harms June I think it was that woman's laughter that reminded me of our need to know, so clear it is that she doesn't know what her companion thinks of her, how he leans into her laugh and touches his wine glass without lifting it. If I believe in you we may receive their dinners by mistake, a form of prayer in some cultures, where the random arrival of food is as freighted with hope as the Tarot. Or is it the small sprig of something she wears pinned to her pocket that makes me think of Blake, his habit of covering lunch stains with funny buttons? He died in 1982, though for years I pretended differently, scratching my cheek as he did when considering the angle in billiards. His mother named him for the mystic, not the poet, as if we all have two closets to consult each morning. But today is my birthday, May 20th, a Saturday, and you are treating me to dinner at dusk and alfresco, our favorite restaurant, our favorite spot at the edge of the patio. The bees are wrestling above the garden tables, bouncing and dodging, thumping each other like drunk lovers, buzzing the bright blouse of that lovely little girl who seems ready to scream, her mother waving a white napkin. These evenings are fragrant with summer, you can taste it at the edge of each breath. Like fog lifting from a freshly planted field, how it arrives at your window redolent of loam, it seems we are in the doorway waiting for the sounds of lawnmowers and window fans, for the air to thicken with heat. But then time really is a distance as they say, and if we hurry we'll get somewhere by morning, perhaps June. Let me help you with your salad. I'd wear a suit out of season (the sandy linen one with the backward pleats) if I thought it would carry us through "the charity of the hard moments." But it seems at any second the rain will be loosening our buttons, and it is not so much a sinecure that I propose but a little laughter in the face of it. I forget it isn't you grown quiet in the green light spilling through strange trees, but my memory of you. We were talking about Blake. Loss is the province next door to presence, you say. Well, yes, I suppose. But what about who I was before, the strange shoes I wore? And that vague beauty hidden in the folds of a silk shirt packed away, the arms trapped behind, the fumes of camphor--I could call it hope, it was that sweet--do I leave it behind as well? Oh but it's learning to live with loss, they say, that will burnish the slim remains, though with what it isn't written. As if we had so much more. As if we hadn't given most of it away. I had meant to tell you about Blake the first time we made love (forgive me for forgetting), but I was listening to what you were saying. And suddenly I thought of the wine in the refrigerator, the strawberries: how easily summer heals, whether bought in small baskets or simply remembered. So why won't you let him go, you say. Let him go, yes. It's funny but I once imagined you in feather boas, nothing else. And though often termed a struck reverie, I find wonder an uncoiling, how they slipped from your shoulders, snaked around your hips. But I have nothing to fear for this never happened; I can let it go. As the heavy mist this morning left its fingerprints on the porch swing, the past is a rash that now and then recurs; and I don't want to cure it. But could we have that wine now? I know Blake would approve of this armistice, this supposition of love, and Blake was my first friend to leave early, I listen to him. Your Favorite Things Your Favorite Things I wish I could show you this evening, the silver accidents of lilac doused with shade, the doves out of exile shining on the wires, the last light. Early May is a suburb's chance to be sentimental, all the wounds half-healed, the dogwood useless without the snow shovel and salt still tucked into a corner of the porch. A rope hits the sidewalk two blocks away, a girl's throat filling with rhyme as she waits for her sister to enter the brief dwelling inscribed in air. No fireflies yet. First corn at the farmstands but no cantaloupe, no watermelon. I wish the bandages would fall from the maple tree next door. I wish the face in the privet would turn away. And the blue vents in an evening sky so close to healing. And the friend in his favorite suit so close to being healed. I wish I could show you this evening, the cufflinks glittering in the grass. No. Here they are, the fireflies. Too soon. James Harms' fourth book, FREEWAYS AND AQUEDUCTS, will be out from Carnegie Mellon University Press later this year. Newer poems appear in recent or forthcoming issues of CANARY RIVER, VERSE, JACKET, TRIQUARTERLY, HOTEL AMERIKA, POETRY INTERNATIONAL and elsewhere.