for Don

You brought donuts in the morning of our first days and
we watched the great rivers through my South Side windows/everything
swelling, we ate in the turquoise kitchen and opened the dreaming door:
our Pittsburgh rolling by on the coal barges, the P&LE carting steel 
to the still-rising cities of the West, a couple speedboats 
running the dirty summer Monongahela, 
you on your way to work. I said no one’s ever 
been this nice to me as I walked you the 52 steps down
from my third floor apartment, you tilted your head,
looking at me in a way I’d never seen: 
like I was the most sublime person, 
your blue eyes seeming truly puzzled: 
I haven’t even started to love you yet, 
and at the door the world barreling through—
this time with gifts, fierce fires,
and planets of luck.

Listen to a reading of the poem.