I think after that a calm poem, a straight love poem.
Still about water, now it's a-- as I said,
it seems to me that this water is the engine of the universe.
We all burn in a combustion of water.
Our metabolism uses water all the time.
We sweat, we exhale water.
We are like flames of water burning.
And sometimes, you can sit still and imagine this
and see this and see yourself by the water that
flows through you.
The river that you can never step in twice
as you could never experience the same thing in your body
twice.
You can sit aside and contemplate this.
And you can see it in the commonplace things in sweat,
in a hot room, the window mists up.
And of course, lovers right on windowpanes their initials
where the water is misting.
When the steam is misting, they write their initials.
A heart with an arrow through it to link them.
And this is a love poem about sweat, and about water,
and about the flame in which everybody burns.
It's called "Sweat."
"I sit in the hot room and I sweat.
I see the cool pain be due with me.
My skin breathes out and pearls the window
pane likes it and clings to it.
She comes in.
She loves me and she loves our children, too.
And still the sweat is trickling down the pain.
The breath of life makes cooling streaks and wobbles
down the pain.
We breathe and burn.
We burn all together in a hot room.
Our sweat is smoking down the windowpane marks time.
I smoke, I stir, and there I write PRBR, a streaming heart.
The sun strikes at it down a wide hollow shaft.
Birds swing on the beams, boil off the grass."