We

[ellajam]

Hi, tiger, glad you bumped it. I've been having a hard time pinpointing what works and doesn't for me but I'll give it a go.

Each read makes me think of Tony Hoagland's Grammar.

Grammar

Tony Hoagland

Maxine, back from a weekend with her boyfriend,
smiles like a big cat and says
that she's a conjugated verb.
She's been doing the direct object
with a second person pronoun named Phil,
and when she walks into the room,
everybody turns:

some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious,
and the bees, if they were here, would buzz
suspiciously around her hair, looking
for the door in her corona.
We're all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy,

we've all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap.



from Donkey Gospel, 1998
Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minn.

Copyright 1998 by Tony Hoagland.
All rights reserved.

I can't figure out if you are two adults falling in love with each other or with twin babies. That plural babies makes it non-specific for me. If indeed they're just general babes it seems odd for new lovers.

I've got a problem with "sober sums" too. I keep thinking I'll get it but I don't.

So, while I love the place this poem seems to come from I remain confused.

I don't know if my comments will help at all but I gave it a try.

We

We fell in love today –

as we all should,
(and you all too),
whenever we can.
 
We think that's what hope is.
 
We were breathless;
goose-bumped bigger than sober sums;
reconfirming God
in the smell of babies’ shoulders
with new elastic skin.
 
And we asked of all our personalities:
“Don't we wish we could feel this every day”?
And I swear we chanted,
“We do, we do”,
before we'd finished the question.