You must be dead at least ten years.
You must have lived an unremarkable life
before that: a teacher, say, of unremarkable

   preferring not to unround his bubble
of self against the else
         of another

I’m unconvinced that language acquisition
         propagates a body’s
   education

it seeps away at permanence, wears canyons
            from rivulets, recycles cement as sand.
I have experienced water firsthand.

By the fifth day of rain
a few had begun to dance,
though not quite properly,

No one is willing to suggest
it’s miraculous: the blood-like strain
weeping from the third of several

Not the kiss alone
      but an essence of kiss,
its dark matter left undisclosed

I’d just then turned away
from recording all the charge slips I’d laid
aside during morning rush—gas sales,

For the sake of argument pretend
we don't know who they are, this couple,
one on either side of a cast-iron tree