poem I wrote sitting across the table from you

"I was at a coffee shop working on a long poem: I overheard someone say that bit about rubbing two nickels together, and glad for the distraction, I thought way too much about that saying and somehow it turned into a kind of love poem. It's a procrastination poem, I suppose, but love poems always seem to be for me."
—Kevin Varrone

to feel the touch of you, to love without skin or sky, to find you folded between the pages of a lingering Erik Satie afternoon that slinks through the day, trying to pass unnoticed. It starts when you catch it by the scruff of its neck, and grins idiotically.

at the lake, the rohu fish has taken the bait, and the young fella pulls like some heroic greek hero. The rohu erupts out of the lake, flaying water like napalm. A pair of dragonflies hover low over the grass, looking for a place to land. Buffaloes rush to the lake in an avalanche of hooves, and jump in, before savouring the coolness, and slowly swimming to the other shore.

The evening is our fireplace, the banyan tree ceiling, our tangled firmament.
I rub my hands together, blow smoke over smarting palms.

‘like some ancient star’