Courting

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I. Prayer 

Bless us as we try to find 
ourselves, 
each other. 

II. 

Went to play ball 
on the low hoops on 9th East. 
Got next game with my buddies. 
The team we challenge has a girl 
playing. When we walk on 
the court, she picks me to guard. 
She’s tough here, sweating 
and gritting her teeth, playing with the boys, 
not afraid to mix it up. 
I’m a little uncomfortable 
playing defense on her. 
Then I get a pass that leads me past her; 
open path to the basket, I dribble twice and dunk 
the ball weakly. She is behind me, 
and before I can land 
she clips my feet out from under me. 
Trying to twist in air, I break my fall with a hand, land 
on my back. I’m embarrassed and bleeding 
and have no idea what she did 
(snicker? gloat? feel remorse?) 
as I walked off the court applying 
direct pressure to the cut on my hand 
which stayed infected for 2 months 
and left a pink scar.

III. Rodin’s “The Hand of God” 

There is no doubt this Hand is flesh, 
a creator of the physical. 
Softly curving couple, contorted and still soft 
in their effort to find each other, 
to touch and fulfill, to fit. 
The Hand is bigger than their life. Maybe shielding, maybe blessing,
maybe creating, or it may be that its work is done 
and now it’s backing out to go somewhere else. 
But for now, it’s in the picture, and there is no doubt
it’s physical. 

IV. 

4 hours alone with my mind in the car driving back to California
from Las Vegas. Despair, creating absurd scenarios, hope,
back to despair. 

V. Prayer 

I suppose I’m supposed to be thanking you now. 
Right? You’ve answered my prayers. 
I left it in your hands. 
Right? 
I’m off the hook, away from something unhealthy.
I’ve suffered 
and that is for my own good. 
I’m stronger now. I’ve learned something. 
You’ve got something waiting 
in the shadows for me 
and I’ll be so thankful 
when I find out what that is. 
Right?

VI. 

This woman I see 
every day when I leave my building. 
She walks in 
the door as I walk out. 
Walking smartly, our schedules cross paths. 
We have noticed each other. 
I can close my eyes now 
and see the lines of her legs. 
My mind can take me into a meeting 
with her—stopping her at the door, 
her weighted dark hair, the sound 
of a voice I’ve never heard. 
But I have no precedent for this. 
I have no name for her. 
At best she is a pronoun, 
maybe a metaphor 
for the distances involved 
in passing by, 
in longing. 

VII. 

Falling in love with the woman who waited my table at Nunzio’s
who helped me find a Tindersticks CD at Blockbuster
who sits in the car next to mine 
at the red light. 

VIII. 

Remedios la Bella is dead. 
So is the young Italian woman 
in The Godfather.

She made me angry because of her idyllic
nature: written by a man who dreamed his appetites.
Of course that Italian beauty had to be blown up,
and of course I don’t remember 
her name (how could she have one?). 

Remedios isn’t really dead. 
She is a figure that when stretched 
beyond its bounds 
falls, shrivels, deflates— 
the down after the high 
that’s lower than before the high, 
that leaves us with nothing but 
sleep that I rub out of my eyes. 

IX. 

The trick is going to be falling 
in love with someone 
I actually know who actually knows me.

X. 

I am inside a prism 
that reaches out into a point 
straight ahead at my eye level. 
Just outside the transparent parameters 
of this prism is the woman 
I saw from behind at the grocery store, 
dark luxuriant hair, compact body 
and her boyfriend’s arm draped 
over her shoulders (he was wearing sunglasses
which signified an utter lack of style or taste).

When I saw her more clearly, she was
somehow not so appealing. But
even if she had lived up to the promise
of her hair 
I think she would’ve been outside
the prism I’m in 
that narrows and narrows 
into a clear-eyed point 
in front of me in the distance.