The pool was warm;
we were seaweed
slung and drifting silently.
The locker room was a cold blast
reviving aches, reverberating
moans and groans
and other mortal assonance.
Nipples taut against the wind,
Brussels sprouts on cracking plates,
youth just passed at hurry's gait.
Rose of easy gone for good.

We talked about the trivial
of temperatures and icy roads.
Breaking hips like toothpicks
on an olive ring we tried to skewer,
but hit the seed.
"Yesterday," one woman said,
"thorns and bristles lined the street;
I swore at them, their littering;
today, in frost, they looked like lace."
Taken back and whittled down,
I sensed the way her struggles
brought her fish to fry.

Nature plays with leveling,
always finding Middle C
on dusty old piano slats.
Orange sunsets hanging out
in boxes of stashed ornaments,
beating up the black of dark.
Mercury of rising stars
in glassy-eyed thermometers.
Standing now would always be
that quick green kiss
beneath the drying mistletoe.
Our bones, shot tigers, all of them,
had things to say about the world.