Touching the Edges

I was in love then with the easy light
that slipped through the shutters of that rented room
touching the edges where your body vanished
into light or Florentine landscapes
each with its winding road-to-heaven
& that blue sky, tender & dissolving
I tried again, a kind of sugar & water
solution. Nothing came together
tears weren't glue
we were in those days young, unfocused
as my breath misting the glass
you held out to me. I wanted
to let go, to step out into that light
beyond our bodies' separate galaxies
along some braid of time turning back
again & always in that breath held space
before the angel's gesture or the fall
of petals on the perfect Botticelli grass.
Decades later the planets are still
turning while those inevitable orads
wind away & the summer birds
flare all through my distant woods
in fragile generations: no, here nothing stays
you are still gone. Over & under
I braid my daughter's hair
the light catching, again, for a time
on her skin, on my outstretched hand.