Cullen Bailey Burns

 

Nostalgia

 

Of course we are beautiful in our remembering

—how my hair fell across your chest, how the sky

was tinged with pink. Sometimes I believe

we rose out of our bodies then, but I am wrong.

 

These are my loved mountains giving in to streams,

to rivers, to the inevitable ocean. I cling

to the pictures I carry of them—the land's

slope and give, the way pines also cling

 

to curve and inclination and somehow I am back

at desire. I cannot say enough what ease

the night air gave us, how fog caught

in the valleys, at the lips. But the fierce shape

 

of memory changes each time we play

the movies our skin made on the bright screen

behind our eyes. Better these mountains now,

fields with black flies and crickets.