Robert Okaji
Down and Away
How soon we lose the scent
of our first love's
body, that odor of perfume
over sweat and uncertainty
and the overwhelming surge
into what will never again
be new. You shake yourself
back, wondering
if falling stars could choose
to rise again, whether
they would rejoin the firmament
or simply retreat deeper into the
ocean's black, cooling, sliding
down and away, slipping
free of regret, evading forever
the sun's long fingers.
Robert is a half-Japanese poet living in Texas. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Clade Song, Taos Journal of International Poetry and Art, Panoply, Kissing Dynamite and elsewhere.