Ice-cubes

1. Each of our words
is the melting of an ice-cube
in both action and content.
2. Polar bears daintily sipping tea
    on migrating polar caps.
3. Do you hear the way each sound
collapses upon itself? Eyes follow
the slow drag from counter to floor,
fingers recover from numbness.
One drop, salty and warm,
hangs upon your nose,
too stuffed up to smell.
4. I feel the transparency
course through my body,
hear the way my limbs disappear.
5. Do you remember Mantauk, Melonie?

6. No, on second thought, none of our words
are ice-cubes. What we say has no form
or feeling.
7. What we say, what we don't say,
the blurring of words into non-words,
8. the spaces between nonwords, nonwording.
9. This poem finds form as it lives,
and so it teaches us how to talk and act.
10. "Love's as simple as saying yes."
11. The subtle pinch of discipline.
12. Love emptying us
of the words we started with.
13. Maybe I'll forget Mantauk too,
14. Snugglebunny will forget the cold beaches
and late-night coffee talks.

15. I will find a way to write it right
so I can close the notebook
and never think or speak of it again.
16. The ebbing pages will sink
17. like ocean tides back into the earth's core.
18. Niyebi kitoko mingi te.
19. The ocean will sit perfectly still and wait
20. while I, like water vapor, will sublimate
into the waiting, empty air.