after Stephanie Burt and Poetry Unbound

It’s Friday night, dusk, and I bring myself to The Hudson

to breathe. I listen to a poem that is part-prayer: someone

will probably love you; and I watch the clouds sweep over the moon;

the poem sweeps into fact, then promise, and here is where I slide

into its sweep: I walk along the river’s lull, watching the moon

iridesce and when it pulls through, I stop along the path, in star

and in startle, noting the pull of my heart, as I catch the eye

of a stranger in the night, and feel that promise pull tight

around me, within me, thinking, there are ways to re-love something

and I replay the poem, then I replay the poem of my life, the story

I tell myself, but this time, a little differently. My whole life I’ve wanted

rapture, rupture, this and that, but the story is I am more than my want;

I am the moon, full with light, in song and in sight, with its knowing,

its knowing, that time is just time; it is just time; it is just time.