B.D. Love REFUSAL You glide toward me, dazzled sunlight pressing itself here to your breast, there to your thigh— as would my hand if it were gently wrestling Your obstinate and ruthless purity. I dream you mine. We touch, we kiss, your hands probing in ways as wise as gravity— and then the empty weight of circumstance descends, and makes a leaden fool of me. I tell you, longing is more than fire. It's light— A kind of virtue—pure, yes!—measureless— You hold your own, yourself, once delicate as apple's flesh, now turned, no, willed to glass. Your sheer refusal forms a convex lens Through which all longing concentrates—and ends. REDUCTION All that takes shape upon the earth will die. What we've constructed will, one day, be razed. It's simple stuff: all things must fade—the dye in your jeans. Your hair. Your health. I'd not have raised so obvious a point, except to pause to contemplate my dogs, whom luck has sent to me. They age. They move on tender paws. They're not so quick to jump at any scent outside the window, as they used to do. I think they know, their noses know it's time and let it pass, no thought of what comes due— mere odor, like a wilting sprig of thyme, mere death, like mine ahead, this line of pain wiped clean—like noseprints from a window pane.