Second Love Sestina

I remember the pulsing of the sultry night
the fields around us thrumming with life
insects coupling, hearts throbbing, my stuttering intake of breath,
a swollen river rushing inside my bruised rib cage
we, in the half darkness under the blessing of a cloudless sky
you, me and the possibility of a second love

we stood swaying as one, as old redwoods find love
the seam between us imperceptible that night
only stars for witnesses in an indigo sky
little thought but one—this is the first day of a new life
maybe this man can free me from grief’s melancholy cage
with a simple synchronized intake of breath

in my first marriage, too insecure to take a full breath,
I knew little of love
all work, precious little play, assigned by convention to a cage
then trapped by it, night after troubled night
is this what there is to life?
I want more dancing, more music, more open sky

after eleven years under an oppressive sky
I took my migraine headaches, two kids, and left, so I might breathe
begin again, reinvent my life
reinvent love
and night
fiercely determined to shed the outgrown cage

was it my own self-inflicted cage?
I’ll never know, as I peer into the layers of a complicated sky
was it me or was it him, I remember keening to the night
this I know, I couldn’t breathe
and without it, there can be no love
no life

this was the messy life
I carried into that fecund field—ready to shed the timeworn cage
of painful first love
banish the endless gray sky—
oh, I will never forget that first luxuriant breath
in your arms on that star-spinning night

it’s been twenty-four years of life with you now
under every sort of sky, night breathes us—
for this love is not a cage but a threshold

First published in Is It Hot in Here? Beautiful Cadaver Anthology, 2019