Moving Through the Crowd, I Saw 

The sky in a second. And you 

were everywhere. Yes, lightning 

without thunder. Suddenly a lifetime

eclipsed. Your wet eyes throbbing 

red certainty. Hands in the air 

already evaporating. My mouth trying 

to describe the horizon. My love: 

Hesitation doesn’t play into the scene 

when you’re here with me. Promises like heat

thrown into the dark. Sparrows flying north 

at the end of spring. I learned that home

is a moving target. The ocean, too 

abandons its limbs to find out 

what it wants. Oh, desperate cries 

of love, blue and fleeting. Nothing

is the sound of me and you.

The italicized line in this poem is taken from the song "Heat" by Ultracrush. The first line in the seventh stanza is language adapted from "Sunday Afternoon" by Christine Hou.  

Cole Pragides has been a Semifinalist for the Adroit Prize, a Finalist for the Plentitudes Prize, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work is forthcoming in wildness, phoebe, ONLY POEMS DAILY, and Frontier Poetry. Find him flying a kite in New York.