EAGLE-EYE TREASURES

 

“Look up,” you say, “there is water on both sides of the road.”

and there is- an expanse of glimmering blue- I’m lost in it

 

“Look,” you say another time, “Moss on rocks. Frozen streams.”

and these are a few tender handfuls of my favorite things.

 

Tenderness like the way you pick mullberries

the way you hand them to me in my white dress

our fingers stained purple with sweet satiation

drifting out of time and back to our innocence

if only for a treasured twilight moment

 

Tenderness like the way you catch fireflies

cupped in your palms and give them to me

because I’ve always been too awestruck

and fretful of accidental firefly injury

 

and I could go on, too, all these small gentle ways

you give love to the whole universe from the center of yourself

like the way you prepare a meal, and also

the way you know when your friends are hungry

 

Tenderness like those words you never heard

like the words you still worry to feel and stumble to say,

and glitch to hear but still not in a good way

 

so we have three taps instead and sometimes two more

because these things are armfuls of love already by themselves

moments without the need for a single superfluous word