If You Asked

the Late News and the hour grew later.

If we had thought to, instead of watching,

we could have joined our other halves

in the next room, who stayed up reading

another few pages and writing letters

they would mail in the morning.

IF YOU ASKED

I can't say for sure she and I won't

touch, that a few bars from a song

hanging in the air might not be

enough to change what we thought

into what we did. That sounds too

country and western, but sometimes

those poor bar singers saw what

they sang sitting night after night

in front of them and had to say it

outright to keep from taking it back

home to their rented room. I think

if I mouth their words, even when

we're kept close apart by the chords

of a slow dance, there still will be

time to think past what it might

feel like now. Thinking how I would feel

later is one way. Or what I would say

if you asked. I heard Hank Williams

had a bad back and sang from that pain

too, as well as how he knew we get lost

when we touch and when we think not to.

He tied words to knot below the skin,

half because on hard nights he was strapped

into his guitar to keep him standing.

He knew what he had to lose.

I don't want to do anything to lose you,

even if you don't pick to ask. What I'm

not sure of yet is how to unsing a kiss

and, kissing you, strum out what I didn't

have the heart to do.