In my Commonplace...

Most Like an Arch This Marriage
BY JOHN CIARDI
Most like an arch—an entrance which upholds

and shores the stone-crush up the air like lace.

Mass made idea, and idea held in place.

A lock in time. Inside half-heaven unfolds.


Most like an arch—two weaknesses that lean

into a strength. Two fallings become firm.

Two joined abeyances become a term

naming the fact that teaches fact to mean.


Not quite that? Not much less. World as it is,

what’s strong and separate falters. All I do

at piling stone on stone apart from you

is roofless around nothing. Till we kiss


I am no more than upright and unset.

It is by falling in and in we make

the all-bearing point, for one another’s sake,

in faultless failing, raised by our own weight.