Thank you

Choosing a pair of opera stars to play
the leading roles might not, at first, seem hard:
the melodrama of our wedding day,
warm nights in Africa, the fights, the bars…

But far too few, I fear, would have the art
they’d need to find your sudden sotto moods;
or my comodo as the chorus parts
indifferently, then heals as I pass through;

how we each guard and ration all that’s true
within, and – piano – hear in private space
the solo arias of lives and lands

we neither leave behind, nor know; how you’ve
delivered me respite from loneliness,
and let me be a loved and lonely man.

Published in a Hedgehog Press Stickleback edition