Love Poem for Stephanie

                 When we talk it should be in
                 Cocoliche or Baracoon,
                 some creole we can live in,
                 built from the tentative pidgin
                 of cultures touching lightly
                 like trade, like skin, learning
                 each other, working past
                 getting and giving to love.

                 When we move there should be
                 strange names for what we do
                 towards each other. No dance,
                 gambit or skater's leap
                 is new enough to make
                 such unnatural demands
                 on the lexicon of contact
                 and release, trust and surprise.