it's all happening at once

in the static waiting moment
I think incessantly of your ring,
trying to seize each breathy moment
that crosses the frosty line
hoping the ice will freeze this yearning
that is then and now and when.

to the graceless eyes of passing hints
the rhythm of your form is lost
in the flutter of wind-blown litter,
blinded by the climate chaos
of handbill bark and paper cups:
heads down and hands in pocket,
your spectral moment breezes.

I see you in laundromat abstract,
tumbling in space that morphs to time
in a front-loading gurgle of foam,
ending in rivulets near the wash of cry:
your eyes inked upon papyrus
as the dhows pass with striped sails
curved against the racing clouds;
even then it seems I loved you.

did my chase continue
through the colored clocks of carousels
where nocturnal spins are normal
and stallions bare their frozen grief?

was that you pounding linens
on flat black shoals
under the flowering quince
with its orange promise
of tart speckled fullness?

I sense no tearless eyes
or dry loins or barren deltas
on the shoals of our slick issue,

merely hints of did and do and when.