
(glass sculptures by Hans Godo Frabel displayed at Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh PA)
3:00 a.m. —
the portal hour between worlds,
those who sleep
and those who do not
He was broken
and he was beautiful
it was one look, but it was everything
She was like a woman of Leonardo da Vinci’s, whom we love not so much for herself as for the things that she will not tell us.
from A Room with a View by E.M. Forster, 1908
his memory
crawls into
her mind,
winding and binding
and finding a way
into her stilled
and hollow heart
you were then, the age i am now–
i think about this in the dark and
scoop your image from my memory–
your young children will be grown,
your hair, fully silver–
of course when i meet you in my dream later that night,
we are as we were–
and i am desired once again
it was the emptiness of your gaze,
and the tilt of your head
that made a melancholy blanket of longing
linger past midnight and into the following day