Gay Marriage

Now that I’m happy, I think of when I was not.

The angles of the city gave the impression of happiness,

the torquing El, the tourist sculpture 

like a globe shimmying through a looking-glass sock.

Late one night, from his illumined image on a grid,

the stranger in the high-rise summoned me

for an act so angular I became the neck 

of the crepuscular swan that Cornell glued into a box. 

The next day I stood in front of the vitrine 

at the museum, willing away my own reflection 

to inhabit a clock, a dovecote, 

a bubble that would never pop.

Across the country I’d idly refresh his screens, 

the young doctor in dignified poses

at the pediatric oncology ward 

or alluring ones above Michigan Avenue, 

at first alone, then with another, grinning 

like reunited twins, until their journey 

mirrored our own updates: a sensuous ryokan, 

a waterfall guttering in an antipodal fjord, 

matching tuxedos in a canted archway 

at some timeless villa rustica.