Daffodils Meditating in Mississippi

The sun shone viciously circular

That last afternoon in your yellow city

Our shadows on the sidewalk

Irritably golden and momentary

Why didn’t we

Call it New Guinea call it Poughkeepsie?

The sky's apathetically cold 
Here in Mississippi

My bad elbow aches with it and you

You’d tremble sweetly

Here in this disorder of rain

The dogwood’s blooming

Soon the redbud'll bloom too

I hate the shoes

You’re not wearing

I feel your steps in my steps

Your perfume breathes in rooms

You’ve never entered

You inhabit my hands I hear you

Slightly shaggy and smoothly carved

Breathing near my secret thought

Call it shish kebab or Zanzibar

What’s this language that speaks us

As if a word imagines us?

Only a word

For something about the body

A word we put in our open hands

We who gain a sort of knowledge

To which metaphysicians traditionally aspire

A truth that others may not

Easily attain

Suppose of them

Everything we won’t admit

Everything of which we’re finally fondly capable

Call it lotus leaves

Call it lavender shadows

How many people didn’t see us

That last evening we held each

Insufficiently necessary part

Of sufficiently unnecessary thoughts?

You smiled you said

Causes explain their effects

But effects don’t explain their causes

Your eyes offered exactly the final cause

They rendered Aristotle’s that-for-which

Call it cataclysm call it

The swallow’s loop instructing stars