What we thought

were glints of mica or quartz in the stone wall—

where our summer transfiguration began,

where you upturned your mouth, just outside

the streetlamp’s halo, and initiated a sequence of

offerings: lips, breath, tongue, breast, the wild

nectar, the heart (its long drop), then words (always

ultimate is utterance)—were the faint, scribbly

still-sparkling trails of snails

that at night scoot, indifferent (I imagine)

to gravity, up eighteen feet of limestone to

a terraced garden for fallen figs, nasturtium, dewy

seedlings, rot and root—and copulation, gastropodic

purple ecstasy in mucosal froth, watched over by

constellations mostly forgotten, conceived

in the vanished millenniums—black seas and

black sands that were volcanic mesas—

known to peoples who charted parts of the continent

now lost to water, to ice, to sun—lost to

the ravages of wind, construction, and drift—

celestial patterns (the hunt of ogres, embracing lovers,

old woman with rod, dragon that maws the sky)—

and for nine nights each June, except when the moon

is too bright, the glowworms are aloft, their constellated

microcosms signaling across the void, each flare

making itself known to the heart that could complete it—

and the predator hunger that will end it—

and for none of these things, though any

would be enough, I have decided,

         this morning without you, to live.