1.
Today is the second disappointing episode
in our short and furtive history
of non-events.
I think you are a man
who never casts a shadow;
perhaps you are a rustler
who never leaves hoof-prints.

You are the horse-thief of the unfaithful,
escaping from even these illicit bonds.
I imagine my seeking hand,
stealing to your shoulder,
might merely pass through
a mirage of evanescent flesh,
of luminescent bone.
And I imagine,
if I reached forward, eyes closed,
to find your sunburnt cheek,
I would open them on an empty windswept plain
devoid of any rag or shred to show
that you had ever been.

2.
No, not a mirage, a glamour!
Now, I know that the shimmering I see
disguises an underneath solidity.
Pale Hun with beautiful and balletic hands,
who are you? And what do you mean?

How, and why is it, that our bodies always lean
inward to make a shelter of intimacy?
Like Mongolians squatting
in their felted shelters,
we lean toward each other to make a place
that excludes the harsh winds off the blue peaks,
the burning winter sun.
We huddle either side of a short-lived fire,
feeding scraps and yak turds into the flames,
knowing that it never lasts;
that, before long, the warmth and safety
will be gone
and the endless and lonely steppe
will be all that either of us has left.