1.

I'm sorry for my damaging
buffoonery, I said. The thing I fear
requires me with weary pistols
and I must dance

as though I meant to scatter
crows, or possibly an orphanage.
Though I'm no merchant of fruit
or any kind of guardian.

I'm sorry for vast, illiterate thirsts
that overran your story about
the time you nearly drowned
in a dress made of champagne.

It's the doves I meant to incite,
that glitter over Brooklyn
like ticker-tape. But you didn't come
with the flagmen at dusk.

2.

The rooftops blued and darkened
disbelief in afternoon;
hour of aerials and doves,
of the blush that wounds

to think of it: those nights of cake
that slept beneath your dress,
this wine that turns to feathers, 
this bundle of wheat

in my bed, this temperature.
Between an ache and the sea
I looked for you. Between the sea
and its medicines.