An excellent roster of poets read to us on the theme of devotion. Here are a couple of "gifts" from Dale Harris and Bob Reeves.THE POETS MARRY
This man came careless to my life,
not meaning to,
was bound for somewhere else
and lost his way but stayed.
This man came light, brought only a few mementos,
some photos of old loves.
He didn't need much room.
This man came strong into my life,
cutting through the lies I called love,
rolling away the stone
from my living, breathing tomb.
This man came brittle,
feared that he would break upon my secrets
but learned instead to bend.
This man came thirsty
for truths he thought I knew --
although I never said I did
he thought it anyway.
This man came late,
came when I was tired
and would need him most.
This man came quiet to my life
until a song sang us both --
it sings us still.
--Dale Harris, 2006
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SEEING YOU
We breathe into the air in front of our heads
facing the same way, two ends of a table,
a trace awkward, a trace killed by anything.
How did we stack up these unreachable lives
of changing adult dispers? singing in subways?
work, play, grief, our double names
hardly ever present? How can it feel like
my gaze is so heavy I have to lift it with both hands
to turn it on you? Can love really include
this much distance and waste? Of course, but
I'm sorry it does. I'm sorry. I'm in need.
Something in you finds me, a straight dart
through my dark mist, always. Something
in me wants to find you just as surely.
But I'm the older one. The sides of my paths are higher.
Show me how. Come, let's do this again.
--Bob Reeves
(printed with permissio of the authors, copyright remains with them)
