Paris, September 22, 2004

                 - for m.p.

In three hours, Paris will simple be

and we, we will be gone, our tea cups

dry, our linens stacked, bags packed.

We leave, the heart of the bed faintly...

still... of love. We journey home to a land

that even now is still foreign.

Still, my tall and pale tapers

burn, waxed and white with holiness

They spark from Notredame to Sacre

Coeur, bridge our return, we go step-

-to-step, arm hooked in arm this park,

this air, this sky, this day, this path,

this Paris, this place that we now