Two Poems, Written Separately, Composed and Dedicated to Brooke on This, Her Birthday, the Number of Which I Will Not Now Disclose out of Virtuous Respect for Her Privacy But Which
Should She Grant Permission I Will Offer Out of Desire to Grant the Truth, May She Know that
Today Is Truly Happy, In Commemoration of Her Birth into this World of Martyrs and Fools.

I.

You broke my heart in Memphis,
those lonely hours in the night of that motel room,
with champagne & soaps & feathers all around,
but nowehere, nowhere would you walk out
in your evening goan, lean against the wall,
you couldn't tell me you loved me there
in that space with the train whistle in the distance
and the lonely sound of the radiator, reminding
me how I would sleep without you near me,
that that train knew nothing about us, nor the smokestack
and the cold, cold rails in the night, they couldn't
lead me back to the sound of your laughter,
not in Memphis, not that night, and all I did was cry.


And you broke my heart in Birmingham,
that Sunday afternoon when you
called me crying and I was on the move,
and the tears and the wheels were rolling,
and I was staring at a sign with three arrows
that were sending me down three highways
that didn't lead me anywhere I knew
that didn't lead me back to the heart
of the hearth with the warmth & the depth of you.


And you broke my heart in Jasper,
where the rocks & the rills & placid streams,
where the junipers wave & the elmwood trees,
where I was leaning back north & fighting
all the winds in every direction and I could feel
my heart was giving out & beating slow & long
and love was screaming off the reins, telling
me to slow down my heavy pace and fly
like a nighthawk with long, elegant wings
back to the straits, the wellspring, back to loving you.



And you broke my heart in Atlanta,
Under a Georgia-heavy sky where the peach blossoms
filled my lungs with their scent, sweet and soft,
and all I could do was cry; I wasn't quite sure
why you told me you were a peach, but on that day
I could smell you all over, and in my memory,
and your hair was with me, your skin, your smile,
the lingering scent of a hundred mornings of
how I'd been with you and a hundred more
I might never know and in the light of the Georgia
sunshine, I couldn't hide, & I just couldn't help but cry.



And my heart was broken before I left Georgia,
I left that boy I was when I met you
somewhere down there, deep under the southern clay,
I left that boy with the Alabama moonshine,
with the dust of the Oxford moors, the mist of the Tupelo
ferries, and the fog and the crickets and the Mississippi
bullfrogs and the Choctaw moccasins, and baby,
I just couldn't really bring myself to care,
I caught the first train back to Cape Girardeau,
the steamboats just west of Cairo, that boy you knew
was not on the freightliner heading south into Arkansas,
that boy you knew, you thought you loved, he was
already halfway through Missouri, he'd left Tennessee
in a hurry, the mud already washed off his boots
by the Kentucky rain and the Illinois showers,
he was back in your arms before you could sigh,
before you finished any last letters goodbye.



You broke my heart and you'll break it again,
I love you, baby, my northern light, you'll never
stop shining, I hope you don't, I hope, I hope
I'll never see New Hope again, New Harmony
or New England, & if I do you'll be with me,
or following close behind, you've taught me to break,
to break, to break my heart over & over again,
and fill your arms with my blood, my love,
and with tears of joy and tears of passions,
& with tears of love on my cheek, I just can't help but cry.