The Orbit of You

When you passed me, as the party petered out into its sad drunkenness, like a meteor losing light,
I was caught in the wondrous orbit of your yellow dress, with that fringe of red to match the auburn of your hair, and the smile that was only friendliness opening worlds within me

Time and space became nothing in my brain 
A thin fog, an oozing sense of electricity, as if I were the first to reach up and touch the mystery  
I wanted the moment to never unhand me
To stretch on into blind eternity
To shake me down for every coin and piece of lint inside my sad pockets 

But these moments pass, and so you passed into the kitchen carrying that unwieldly tray of marzipan, exiting like a Greek goddess, the door swinging swung shut to sew in the glory of you (and the perfect lines of your long waist) 
In the dust of ordinary life, at an ordinary time—such are all theophanies

But I have not been able to pass through any space purely
Always breaking the newel post or the last rung of the fence, 
Dropping mud into a clean tankard of champagne
My soiled hands, much as I've tried to keep them clean,
Mussing up the dearest dreams of me
And breaking things along the way

Still
I feel hope at the perfect kindness of your lines, your eyes, and that sweet smile, 
Hope in second birth
In a cleaning, down by the river side
Of desire finally finding the star that guides it true
And pulls up from the earth of me the best parts, that God has long been so patient with,
As stars are patient with the earth