Hydra

A poem

 

I float with a ladybug in bubbles. You swim over

smiling, our unkind games of wit at lunch

purged in the cool water. I stick out my feet.

The low sun warms them. Not enough is at stake.

But I admire how Claudio navigates his car,

his baby girl in the back. Like an elaborate removal

of a hat. Like the Punjabi mystic, in WWII,

who sat with the Germans in the grass. Our love has

the inevitability of revenge. After an hour apart,

we meet with the mistrust of epochs. I raise

my ghost’s portion of wine to you, to your face,

that ancient church, mauled & restored,

now celebrated. You lean back on the bed, strawberries

on your fingers & on your teeth like blood.