Late Evening Song

For a while

Let it be enough:

The responsive smile,

Though effort goes into it.

Across the warm room

Shared in candlelight,

This look beyond shame,

Possible now, at night,

Goes out to yours.

Hidden by day

And shaped by fires

Grown dead, gone gray,

That burned in other rooms I knew

Too long ago to mark,

It forms again. I look at you

Across those fires and the dark.