Proposal

,

.

The promise of gravel, one skinned

arm and turned knee,

one bicycle and its wheels:

The chin-up of light,

morning gift in pine, this space

my palms describe:

The excellent refraction inside

whiskey, that unassailable place

we live within liquid:

The belly-up of fish all morning

on that morbid walk after

the tides have given up:

Those good citizens, the trees

and their branches, leaves that uncurl even

into our hostile spring:

The gazelle and its sister,

a gazelle; the other names for deer, ticked off

on our fingers:

The tent and the place we lived

inside it, two feet by two, and your hands

across my belly like lightning: