Poem For Her In Time
–After Her and Wallace Stevens
I.
Thirteen days. This morning I counted,
read Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.
She said, I like to hold you this way and this
way and this way. There are thirteen ways
I will hold you in thirteen days.
II.
I am not asking for your time. I’m just asking
for your attention when you give me your time.
I want your time, but it is not mine. Though
there are times when time is ours. Hours.
No hourglass exists in your hands.
You are and you are and you are that
that couldn’t not fulfill me.
III.
It was evening all afternoon. It was
snowing and it was going to snow.
You are all red snow falling on me, this
you know, for I have told you and
you believed me and I will not look away.
IV.
I am shrouded in you today.
I am looking at mountains shrouded in snow.
An unabashed love poem is the only way
to say and say and say what more means.
V.
I can’t not think of you when river is said aloud.
The river is moving. My love must be flying.
No, my love, you are stretched across a long couch.
Your hair is tangled. Your mind is not.
Everything a river does. All the ways a river stays.
VI.
Superstition deserves credence. I tell you
it is eleven eleven when it is eleven eleven
because one thousand four hundred and forty
minutes exist if we count days that way.
Eleven eleven happens only twice.
There is one of you and one of me. One
and one. One and one. I have seen the clock
tick to that time less than I have said more
or your name out loud. Saying your name
out loud is how I say more. Superstition
is less luck and more belief in our wants.
Superstition is not selfish. Neither is the clock.
Neither are you. You with your eyes.
VII.
I have two minutes left to tell you the universe.
I will sit in them with you. Two minutes.
These I do not ask for because they are ours.
Let us not be evolved about our wants, our more.
***
Christian Anton Gerard’s first book of poems is Wilmot Here, Collect For Stella (WordTech, CW Books, 2014). He holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Tennessee and lives in Fort Smith, AR, where he’s an Assistant Professor of English, Rhetoric, and Writing at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith. Visit Christian online at www.ChristianAntonGerard.com.
