the stormy dark night wrapped across

the stormy dark night wraps across my windshield,

like a bandit’s mask lashed in place by taut bands of rain,

as I drive north on I-5 this last january back home alone

after having stolen quick intimate moments with you

in your hotel room upstairs at the olympic club mcmenamins

in centralia, while your old coworkers down below

drift from the restaurant area to the pool hall to celebrate

one of their birthdays, a chaotic celebration that pales

in comparison to that which you and I engage in every day

— that mask protects our identities in the sense that only

we are privileged to know each other as well as we do

and it simultaneously marks us as urban folk heroes,

like we’ve robbed the bank of love others look upon ruefully

because it’s ripped off their life savings of faith in partners,

but here we come tossing our largesse of an example

out to them, all that excess gold whose value only we truly know,

like we tossed our bodies across the hotel bed into a single

giggling combining of fortunes, the biggest gift just for us.