Hear the songs you crave. You shall have your
songs, she another kind of reward.
— Virgil, Ecologue VI
The city is sleeping in. Their breaths
rise and part. Here at my desk
and on a kind of wing, I slip into a dream
that you seem to deliver: hips lifting
and rocking, heels digging in.
O, what kind of play is this?
Is it what is real and what is not?
What clarity it brings
about the mind’s cool refusal
to over-script the heart’s sense of time;
about the body’s urge to live its life.
Pulled from one place, how naturally
it grafts itself onto another; how, even
in the driest season, we look for yield:
shocking pink blossoms from clay earth
or lilies from the dry cross-weave
in a chair of forgetfulness.
Or, about love’s need to perform
what it knows — as in Rodin’s
artful unfinishedness:
a passionate kiss, a woman’s hips
turning on a mass
of roughhewn marble to which
lovers are always attached.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 9. This version corrects a text error in the original publication.
