Ra’s small, small boat

​Your melancholy, the arc of it, invasive body of it, our
evenings spent unraveling it, considering it, the largest
 
bolt of cloth you ever unwound. It changed the way I
looked at strangers in coffee shops, their eyes directed
 
below tops of computers, thin walls to block the world;
it changed the way I looked at women who wear berets.
 
I listened less, watched more for signals from feet, from
hands folded like bird wings, the glide of shoulders. And
 
now, miles from you, I unravel myself into darkness,
vague scrim of hope gone like my voice, my treasure
 
of opinions; even god unravels in me with this dream
of red snakes, their grandfather thick and brown falling
 
from the door jamb to drape his coldness across my back
me wrestling the armless creature while he flicks his will
 
upward. Awake at five A.M., no light dragged behind Ra’s
small, small boat, no light to fade my dream of snakes; I
 
recall at last, the day you sent a praying mantis poem, his legs
working in your kitchen window, the way you handled green.