Transgression at a Bar Mitzvah

First, the black of your hair, the formless

thick of your upper lip, the way

we bumped bodies at the pasta station,

the crepe station, the sundae bar, kept

on bumping like salsa dancers’ hips,

sniggering at the excess we conspired

in until our bellies were full as rice pots;

but it was the shrewd malarkey of your talk

that stretched and strained me like all that sounding

string in the Largo ma non tanto movement of

Bach’s Double Violin Concerto; so though

no history, nor affection, lay between us,

we slipped through gold bands belonging to

good people because the moment was a mountain

we could not see around, its soaring terrain

crumbling to gravel in our hands with

each step of our ascent, until at the very instant

we summited, nothing of it remained.