My love is as
David McAleavey

Still tracking, on your laser device, grunt-songs full of back-chat;
easy to pick apart, if I wanted to, like a well-stewed chicken.
Ill-suited, my grandmother would say, and she said it freely.
Please, please, we’ve wrestled stubbornness enough; we’re in
love, yes? I’ll agree to listen more carefully, though clatter
kept quieter would help me in my driftiness, which I also love,
proving, probably, I am the egotist you always suspected.
Except for when I drift beside you, two canoes in the moonlight,
carrying on a conversation aimless and inevitable as a river.
Rest works, in other words, when work rests. Kingfishers
are hallmarks for us, zig-zagging along the Allagash, where loons
expressed loneliness well enough, where moose and bear
brightened and whittled our reflexes—crested birds marked days
nights floated, the sounds of sleep soughing through our tent.

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