This book is in sections.
That poem is the bridge.
It's the last poem in the section of natural world poems,
and it leads into a section of love poems.
I'm going to skip the wonderful beginning, the fabulous heights,
the ecstatic climax, and take you to the end of the love poems
as so many good things will--
it ended.
For What Binds Us.
There are names for what binds us--
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around.
You can see them.
The skin that forms in a half empty cup, nails rusting
into the places they join, joints
dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly wherever they've been set down.
And gravity, scientists say, is weak.
And see how the flesh grows back across a wound
with a great vehemence, more strong than the simple, untested
surface before.
There's a name for it on horses when it
comes back darker and raised--
proud flesh, as all flesh is proud of its wounds,
wears them as honors given out after battle, small triumphs
pinned to the chest.
And when two people have loved each other,
see how it is like a scar between their bodies--
stronger, darker, and proud, how the black cord
makes of them a single fabric that nothing can tear or mend.