Perhaps
it’s the havoc,
summer gone and the world
tipped like a cup. Or
how I’ve been reading Rilke,
fingering your postcards from Paris,
Playing sonatas and dreaming

of girls in bright scarves
and black skirts waving from
buses to hotels with
white, clean sheets
and claw foot tubs.

After all, it’s hard to tell
the speed of bodies falling.
Or the sound of indigo
Unless plagues the staircase.
Unsteadies the ladder.

Meanwhile, I have learned
to breathe underwater.
The slightest intake.
Then the lull.