Too Late

Think of how you are beautiful

like the hawk with his unblinking eyes

like the cat with his careful feet

and his disdain 

like the lines on the palm of the hand

cutting across one another without reverence 

I like to watch life 

pulse in your throat when we climb the hills, I like

the uncommon kinds of beauty

the loveliness of my darling friend

how she will not wear the right colors

with the dusky olive tones 

that roil like waves under her skin

and the smoke of cigarettes curling 

like a dead wreath, nostalgic and acrid 

hanging ‘round her like a cloak of shabbiness 

to my horror and delight 

and the devastating grin 

of the Parisian trash collector with his collar 

of spikes and his projection screen wall 

giving me cereal in the morning and 

warning me against men, because they are 

dangerous and I shouldn’t go home with them 

the way I did with him and his friend

too late, I said to them, it is too late

for your loveliness not to cut into 

the heart of me, I am already undone 

by your eyelashes or the tilt of your head

or the way you laugh at the end of the world

it is too late for us to be saved

from the beguilement of our mortality

rising around us like graphite-shadowed waters

we won’t be getting out of here

alive.