NAVA ETSHALOM

Proposal

The promise of gravel, one skinned
arm and turned knee,
one bicycle and its wheels:

The chin-up of light,
morning gift in pine, this space
my palms describe:

The excellent refraction inside
whiskey, that unassailable place
we live within liquid:

The belly-up of fish all morning
on that morbid walk after
the tides have given up:

Those good citizens, the trees
and their branches, leaves that uncurl even
into our hostile spring:

The gazelle and its sister,
a gazelle; the other names for deer, ticked off
on our fingers:

The tent and the place we lived
inside it, two feet by two, and your hands
across my belly like lightning: