7/6/2014: Birthday

in everything I see kissing and the anticipation
of kissing in the rain yes even 
in rain the grasses their tiny mouths turned up
for more the way the sea meets the air
in an electric sudden that goes on rippled and
rippled in how always the earth draws us down again
tenderly again into the fertile  gravity we must
love if we are to live everywhere
the coming together the pulling apart a moored
ship bumping and bumping the shore
the branch of an oak extending to a maple in
the excuse of a wind the long slow
merging of a stone into the soil puckered 
birthday after birthday having been drawn
reckless to meet this salt plum
sweetness as if nothing but
nothing else would keep us sane keep
atoms and people from flying  apart into the solitary
of outer space lonely as stars and lost airmen and
who shall tell us we have not been here
a thread in quilted time part of the very
fabric the all the everything if these lips
through which we recite eat respire kiss the
dead the newborn wounds tears firmament
envelopes vowel themselves to the O of memory
the taste of something someone loved?