For Lauren on Our Anniversary
Already giddy, by the reservoir,
we’d become each other’s intimate reflections.
Padding through the crisp leaves of Central Park,
we’d pulled on mismatched knit hats against the late November wind.
You’d eyed the listings. You’d checked the time.
And then we did the Guggenheim.
We spoke, amid the mod Italian installations,
of loves and disappointments.
I wanted to dab you in points,
press you in splotches, smudge
you in chalk spray you
on walls. Such
a gentleman.
We spiraled up the galleries
toward a thousand starlings shooting
outward beyond the Major Deegan Expressway,
over crowded suburbs
in the streetlamp halogen-gouache
blue-grays of dusk.
