the first (a sestina)

after Bread by Michael Crummey: https://canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/crummey/poem6.htm

The first of something is precious. I

signed a lease with a lover,

entwined signatures, and made trips to IKEA for plants

and shelves and our first sack

of flour. She brought her ukulele

and old books

to replace my newer books.

The days now all taste the same: I

brew morning bitterness and strum ukuleles

while my greying lover

crosses out lists on a trifecta of screens; daily sack

of emotions transplanted

to tomorrow. But every day still plants

a first of something. This poem on this notebook

or burnt toast this particular shade of burlap-sack

is new. Every day rhymes but I

have never told my lover that I love her

at this precise second, playing a song on her ukulele

that sounds like every other love song on every other ukulele.

Every year snow falls in Vancouver, supplanting

gloom with magic, yet we can never predict when to don pullovers -

whether we’ll be caught inside bookstores

when the snow begins to drift down lazily, or if you and I

will have hit the sack

after a dinner of rotis and conversation, denting the sack

of flour we bought when you brought your ukulele

over from another country, when you and I

began a new life of plants

and books and lowered

angst (the slow burn that comes with long-distance loving).

Every day is the same and every day is new. I brought you a sack

of flowers for Valentine. Do you remember? Several years ago we booked

a vacation in Oahu, where we found this ukulele

in a reserve for tropical plants

and today, here we are, locked together. You and I

have been Facebook Messenger lovers

for so long that every night I remember that poem on flour sacks

and am grateful for ukuleles and slow plants.