Just More Sky

We could have walked together
under the Elm trees, arm in arm
along Champs-Élysées, laughed
about how the rich and famous
really aren’t that important,
about how music is secondary to
the rapid sound of a sparrow’s heart
as it sits in your hand after thinking
a living room window is just more sky.

Had the window been open, it would
have been different, the chance of
getting closer than a poem
to an expanded world of fantastic
reflection was like throwing a bread crumb
onto a river covered in ice, there was no
possibility of anything but reverberation.
At times, I think of her when I see a horse
standing in the early morning fog

breathing a memory of its first mate.
I remember how quickly she gave it all up
for the company of scoundrel(s) and wonder
had she known everything she knows today
would she have done the same?
Someone taps quietly, translating words
into deeds in the middle of the night.
I could have met her there, in Paris
if she hadn’t been such a bitch.