if babel teeth and babel tongue
weaves a wire rope sling
of loosely stranded vowels:
we could a syntax have
without parentheses,
a mere mutter to invoke
comprehension. A gust rigging
your long slow tones and my
staccato speech into a massive
sail we will. On the the river Nice,
you and I lament, la-la-la,
and the water rewinds like film
reversed on its sprockets
if babel teeth and babel tongue
captures, on a double exposure,
what we used to be, I could rent
the distance between us
with adjectives, sweet memoirs
of a sunkissed negative.