These are the ones who don’t want me, them, those
and these: the ones with fire-crisped edges bent
and crackling who dream the orange-tipped tickling
tongues;

those whose syllables are ice, the frost clouds
their rimed clothing; the aged, the young, the thin-
and thick-skinned, the raging, the quiet,
the small-minded,

the big-… I pace the never-claimed betweens, inside
the branching edges, the assents neither majestic or
pinched where there is passage for two (not one
or the many)

rooms with seats for us few but not crowds, neither
parsimonious or grand, which doesn’t mean I know
nothing of passion or still perfection but that I know
how to live