Audition for a Long-Lost Inside Sense

 

Just as simple touch is drawing
a probing barb—backward first
in order to secure what is forth
and, without retreat, out of reach.

And that touch thus treats all that is
as furtherance, a never-finished
and yet ever-polished face,
in a game of what feels soft,

alongside a pausing solid,
waxing loose and amorous,
to appraise, audit all her ears
as long as inclined, willing.

Paramours thus dip into much,
forgetting their heels and hands:

“Would the garter stop me—
stop me from seeing anything else?”

And amid such trance of induced forgetting,
like travelers at the sight of ancient busts,
they tap and open another long-buried sense—

and remember—

what nothing else will count.

Thaumaturgy of a Decent Dragonfly

 

A large dragonfly whipped by my window
and, on a swing, she chose her repose
to spread a frothiest shade of black,
a gauzy game of her ready arms!

Glad and restless to raise ardent whirl
with legerdemain to take one’s breath,
catching fair dreams of iridescence
among sunbeams with her winging fan.

There she thus sits, finely spreading
a translucent charm—just as opaque—
turning beauty into mist and daze.

O that lissome whim of willing yearning!
O that little wounding wraith! What hoses
can she pull—on her clearsighted play!

Apollinaris’ Morning Walk

 

Smoke of morning rays
caught in gauze
of ebbing mist —
thus in unison all

quivers and dithers
on time’s inmost cusp,
waving through the eyes
on a wizard’s wand.

Come and see yourself
this brief séance
so carefully dosed

so that a pharmacist
and an artist appear as one —
with an act of delicate shock.