Some Quiet Evenings

I go out to sit with them — thin
insects tuning their strings,
the night’s first bat casting
in the breeze — and remember
that evening, hot and windless,
a new lover stripping
my bed, spreading my sheets
on the moonless grass.
Who were we then?
Young and swallowed
by the night. Unfinished.
Ill matched.
Sirius trudged across
my narrow field of sky,
the whole universe sliding
away, a little more life
slipping out of me, again
so briefly in love.
Some quiet evenings I go out
to sit with them, all the men
I’ve been, and beneath
that same quilt of stars retrace
my path, the weak orbit
of every man to touch me.