After Reading Your Latest Book, I Dream of You

—for K.K

You are behind a bar, slicing Haas avocados. Devotee
of extractions and skins and savorings. I learn your poems
before the act of a distant morning promises classroom,
where you will arrive milliseconds before your hair.
I wrinkle into your work, ponder the possible meanings
of oolong, which you guild often into tressles on page,
you mason, you crossbeam of poem. There is lyric
in your eyes, the half set lashes tell it, so I cannot speak
to you, ever. You open a Polish wine and invent up a kind
of lust in pouring, or lust, perhaps is what I have yearned
true, though you never seem to mind it. We are valleys,
practiced in collecting each other’s gazes, bar to stool.
I am sure that I am in love with you, though I am young
and easily influenced by your precision. You do not drink
or eat, nor do I. The timelessness of this moment is born
of preparations, which begin each night I call for you,
and do not spoil in morning as I stir you into my tea
and imagine you all day, tasting oolong, oolong, oolong.