Knots

For a long while this place didn’t know me.

The rain came and went according to its own life,

the metronome drip from the eaves

stately with history.

Every day I was an exception.

The floorboards discussed my bare feet.

But sometimes in the seconds

between sleeping and waking

a swiftness caught me up,

as if I were glimpsed

in the corner of an eye, fleeting,

my importance unfixed.

I took my cues from the late afternoon light,

touched what it touched,

ran my fingers along the edges of picture frames,

followed the bright hair on your arm

upward to the curve of shoulder.

Everywhere I touched a small knot tied itself:

clove hitch, cat’s paw, angler’s loop.

And in the end these hold.

The rain continues, floorboards swell.

Your slumbering arm across my hip

fastens us in our own designs.