Late Evening Song

For a

Let it be enough:

The responsive smile,

Though effort goes into it.

Across the warm

Shared in candlelight,

This look beyond shame,

Possible now, at night,

Goes out to yours.

Hidden by

And shaped by

Grown dead, gone gray,

That burned in other rooms I

Too long ago to mark,

It forms again.

I look at

Across those fires and the dark.