Bigger by Far

As I leaf through the pages of the swamp
the crocodiles have set their gantlet teeth in rows
and watch.
Had I not read this book a hundred times at night
through the bare threads of an aging muslin sheet,
I should be lost
to their snap, and the slither and roll to the death,
coming early like autumn this year.
But this is not my first bedtime story, and not my
first, nor second, mapping of wet leaves on cracked pavement
which none will come to repair in this life
and watching where you step is tantamount…
to nothing…
but an inevitable buildup just the same.

The frost at the edges of your mouth
bit me sorely, in times when what I needed was a whiskey, or a kiss, or
a kind word
or really by god anything with a slight tang of humanity
that one person might offer another,
much less a beloved, so shrunken and losing essential particles every hour.

Madly and passionately, I am huge now,
bigger by far than anything you never saw and never looked to see,
and I am enveloped in an unending kiss, and the intoxication of a love
I never dreamed,
consumed by sighs of relief and joy so often that
I have to catch my breath.