The Itch
       

Each day a day to hide in. Overhead, the geese
coax the other geese South: How is it that they

find their way? The long touching of their voices,
the trailing behind of their mates: The sound

their wings make like an engine idling, a bucket
of coal dust dropped to a thud. A cave in the middle

of the night. To know migration is to know life
the hard way. The doctor will see you now. This is

the whirlwind since we've been together: Stunted
by our rending. The leaves have fallen. You, wife,

are sleeping—how do your hands work independent
of one another. Is the cloudlessness a symptom?

Or. One answer is that I know how to lie to myself.
Everything will be okay. I can walk on water, but I

don't because I remember that I haven't before—
instead, moonlight, instead, thunder like a hymn,

a resonant thrumming: Peace be with you. And with you.
Trust me the way one animal thrusts into another,

and this too yields toward long ago gratitude. We are
nothing if we aren't waiting for the apocalypse, my

darkened-eyes. We were so young then. What causes
pain? What cures it? What parts of you may I touch?

Whispers are dazzling, love. We were hungry for ourselves,
and now for salt, for bands of weather, for a frontier

I wish to carry you toward.

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Copyright © 2020 Gary McDowell All rights reserved
from 32 Poems
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission