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.

“Dreaming Door” from Red Sugar, by Jan Beatty, © 2008.  Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press. ****