Bear and Night

the Bear fell in the love with Night

    and Night fell in love with the Bear

and the two ran away through all disapproval to the sea

    & sailed away in a day for a thousand years maybe

they say out there still               

    there there can you imagine them running together

like unlikely clouds the Bear a coat patch

    sewn on the Sea an ebon-hulled schooner

or the cussing storm-cauled captain wheel gripped

    in his teeth and Night the coattail sails that

transport so beautiful stars topple down down

    to drowse in Her billowed lateens

and snore like bells.

    the Bear had a nose for wind and

Night an eye for destinations      

    just careless enough they made the monthly

poems just careful enough they were

    never caught. if you believe their lovemaking

brought storms then believe that in their thigh-twined

    collapse the world grew so calm

that Death wept.

    they were as happy as two things can be

when they forget what they were supposed to be go

    away and begin to mean something else. Reader be

careful don't stumble and die doubting this idiotic

    love or you'll spend your next life crying

on the bottom of the sea. some things are true

    only when they are brought together like

wires in the red metal of your chest: Bear, Night.

    Love is it like that an unnatural

 pairing of spring hunger and blind faith.

    it is where all of the good stories come

from the impossible we go to when we

     finally realize the strange paths

of the heart are not ours to determine

     but to take.