Mountain Laurel

What makes us real
is evening, the not-yet goneness of light

turning each breathing thing
more fully into itself

before the truest dark
comes down. I’ve written this

before. How we descended
the rocky path, hemmed by mountain laurel

not yet in bloom. How flowers
would come, much later, and past

our seeing: this we still believed. And bees
to the petals’ drowsy sway,

between such abandonment
and whatever follows. Even never having seen

mountain laurel in June, try
to hold it close: near dark, a trembling

of tiny lamps, candling the wished-upon
hours. Tussled or gentled by breath, wind,

the briefest of hungers. I watched
your back, your shoulders sway

ahead of me, I watched the lift
and fall of leaf and leaf and leaf.

We walked until. And then. How can it
be night already.