Thursday, February 24, 2011

‘Crush Starting with a Line by Jack Gilbert’ by Lea Graham

    
    
Desire perishes because it tries to be love
& so, I think, why search or seek it?  Entering
its way out the backdoor, calling as Narcissus
himself, curious to himself only—only

this echo.  Yet, some days wild turkeys wing clumsy
across windshields, or poets come to town
& language flocks before flying south, before
jubilee, before hush & slack. In chance,

what we flush from beech & oak, or her  flush blooming
at a table, remains, persists as flight, or flown:
 trace of bird in my eye, balloon drift among sky,
proposing hand, arm.  What is not sexual, though

sex is part, catches life en theos.  Not love, but its
roaming kin & nonetheless, wonderful alone.





(published in The Notre Dame Review, Summer/Fall 2010)

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