After that dance in Copacabana
I begged her that she give me two napkins
that I may write her phone number down twice
and slide one in each pocket for safe keeping.

My mother used to say how her dad, after losing
his keys or some important piece of paper, would always say
I didn't have this problem when I only had one pair of pants.
then she would tell the story

of when he was lucky enough
during the Great Depression
to work at the train station
and how his boss had asked him

to walk an expensive pedigreed dog
that was being shipped across country.
It was the prized pet of some rich, and I am sure -- very important woman.
The dog got loose and ran away. My grandfather feared he'd be fired.

Then he caught a stray,
put it back in the crate that was labeled only "dog"
and then put it back on the train.
I know the story was told for other reasons,

but sometimes I think about that stray.
Am I not like this dog,
interrupted from life,
on a long ride to disappoint

some unknown, angry woman
futher down the line?
This is the way it always happens.
I would not have this problem

if I only had one pair of pants.
Back to the girl at the dance, even with a napkin
in each pocket I still would have lost her number
had she given it to me.

I go back now to that same club
night after night after night
looking for that one dance, that one girl,
that one moment in her arms when I was more.

there were times when I could believe
we were the children of the stars
and our worlds were made of the same
dust that flames in space -- Mark Strand

So this is why we
expand into the night,
why stare as if entranced
into the seamless ether.

To simply learn how
you flood the other's space
with bursting light
while still a universe

apart is why
we search the end
where our beginnings
dance in place.

I see now how you warp
from there to here
without the slightest
wrinkle of motion.

I have come to understand
your ways of explosively tricking
a moment of flame
from the engulfing emptiness.

So we whiff, and I hold inside
my lungs the vacant musk
that shadows
your extinction,

that whirls perpetual
your shattered birth
from the scorched
center of our love.

I write now to say
I admire
what fires you,
what compels you
to warm the other,

to touch that distant
place inside
where we
are each
most alone.

Now that at last
I've found you,
I wonder do you still burn
from the edge of the known
like a diamond blistered

by dark flame?
Or have you finally winked out,
as cold and smooth as a glass eye,
long before your alien
luminance ever saw us?

For how long now,
in our little bubble of air
have we breathed unaware
the splintered ash
of your demise?

I yearn and wobble
from the falling edge
of my own decaying orbit.
Do we share
the same gravity?

Will your ever-bending
self consuming light
stroke for one flashing instant
the thrusting black hand
of my persistent loneliness?

Always will I cling with fervor
to your distant fire
even though we both know
the moment of letting go
is all that endures.

It is this desire
to break into flames
upon inhaling the smallest
spark of meaning
that unites us.

I am sorry
I missed
your birthday.
Please stay in touch.