You think you would love anyone
who listens to such music, lush
vines of invitation winding blind
and harmonious from their nest.
Once, you might have climbed
the stairs to that unknown door,
talked until you were invited in,
seated on a cushion or low chair
eye level with the fluid greens
of plants you could never keep alive
as the room vanished inside music
that for you was the room.
Today, you try to read the title
of the heavy book, a college text
or anthology, holding open the window,
the coffee and lemons, apples and cans of tuna
you shopped for weightless
in an intoxication designed
to make you forget all music
flattens to mere structure
the more you listen. The smell
of a lover’s skin blends with furniture.
Kisses stale into routine. It’s hard
to live a whole life in the body
and still believe the possibility
of love innocent and bold enough
to stay fresh, to venture forward
like the new shoots of plants
whose soft explorations begin,
expecting nothing, thriving as long
as there is room for silence
and music to fill that silence.