Dear Mr. Stevens

One must have been cold a very long time
with every crystalized juniper in place
each needle threatening one's soul
were the landscape of marriage to change,

and then to have it change, disappear from the familiar
into the wrenching away from the known abstraction,
the tender bone alone, exposed to sorrow never
visited, and then transformed once more,

into the heat of love again, a second cup of richest soup,
to know the abstraction itself was the nothing,
a ruse
lined with psychic mail of modernity's seriousness;

to strip bare again, face this new partner,
naked, sexual, bloodied with her own failed construct,
and then to shed belief for opportunity
to see the rosy pink sun
re-emerge from the distant jagged line

unscathed,
full, glorious
like an as yet hour
spent warm amidst the scent of aroused loins
aching for the forgiveness of a new day
only one’s arms and chest
and fingertips
and tongue
and breath
can bring back to life.