You Also, Nightingale

Petrarch dreams of pebbles on the tongue, he loves me at a distance, black polished stone skipping the lake that swallows worn-down words, a kind of drown and drench and quench and very kind to what I would've said. Light marries water and what else (unfit for drinking purposes), light lavishes my skin on intermittent sun. (I am weather and unreasonable, out of all season.  Petrarch loves my lies of laurel leaves, ripped sprigs of deciduous evergreen.) A creek is lying in my cement-walled bed, slurring through the center of small town; the current's brown and turbid (muddy, turbulent with recent torrents), silt rushing toward the reservoir. A Sonata passes by too close (I have to jump) and yes I do hear music here. It's blue, or turquoise, aquamarine, some synonym on wheels, note down that note. It's Petrarch singing with his back to me (delivering himself to voice), his fingers filled with jonquil, daffodils, mistaken narcissus. (I surprised him between the pages of a book, looked up the flowers I misnamed.) Forsythia and magnolia bring me spring, when he walks into the house he has wings. Song is a temporary thing (attempt), he wants to own his music.