Absence

I held onto a wet railing,

For I used to be afraid of falling

Meshing into the sublime cools of the gushing water

As bubbles of air leaked onto the surface

Rinsed foam collected at the bottom

From where I stood

Everything was clear.

Parts of me are crippled,

These legs became inept from walking,

Towards the place where we smoked high hues.

Together behind the school campus

My arms were disabled from holding

Onto your weight

For life,

I held onto you for life.

Dear, dear life.

I found you in the hollows of this perpendicular sphere,

Running away from all that was near.

You survived with three stitches above your left knee

When you fell towards the black hole

Attempting motionless symmetry,

I kissed those lovely ears,

As your lips moved to spell existential philosophy

In part I listened.

Some I remember,

The songs you sang when we sat on green grass

And you cradled my head in your lap.

I remember some.

Most I forgot.

But if I ever see you again,

It will all come back to me.

Song: To Celia

Come, my Celia, let us prove,

While we can, the sports of love;

Time will not be ours forever;

He at length our good will sever.

Spend not then his gifts in vain.

Suns that set may rise again;

But if once we lose this light,

’Tis with us perpetual night.

Why should we defer our joys?

Fame and rumor are but toys.

Cannot we delude the eyes

Of a few poor household spies,

Or his easier ears beguile,

So removèd by our wile?

’Tis no sin love’s fruit to steal;

But the sweet thefts to reveal,

To be taken, to be seen,

These have crimes accounted been.

--Ben Jonson--

Flirtation

After all, there’s no need

to say anything

at first. An orange, peeled

and quartered, flares

like a tulip on a wedgewood plate

Anything can happen.

Outside the sun

has rolled up her rugs

and night strewn salt

across the sky. My heart

is humming a tune

I haven’t heard in years!

Quiet’s cool flesh—

let’s sniff and eat it.

There are ways

to make of the moment

a topiary

so the pleasure’s in

walking through.

--Rita Dove--

Sonnet 40

Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all:

What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?

No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call—

All mine was thine before thou hadst this more.

Then if for my love thou my love receivest,

I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest;

But yet be blamed if thou this self deceivest

By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.

I do forgive thy robb’ry, gentle thief,

Although thou steal thee all my poverty;

And yet love knows it is a greater grief

To bear love’s wrong than hate’s known injury.

Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,

Kill me with spites, yet we must not be foes.

--William Shakespeare--

My Lover Gave Me Green Leaves

My lover gave me green leaves

with the mud of the garden on them,

radishes sharp and red,

nasturtium flames.

He gave me the tender heart

of a cabbage, its glossy coat,

a loaf of bread studded deep with seeds.

He gave me the note the blackbird

I’d cried at the blackness of by the river sang.

He gave me the struck fire of the thoughts

in his mind—flint on flint.

He gave me the taste,

direct on his tongue,

of the syllables their embers did not destroy.

He gave me his word,

the word of an Adam—a promise,

should he set eyes on the sun.

He gave me a drop of the dew to hold.

To see my face in it.

To look through.

He gave me, in the chrisomed palm

of his empty hand—a gasp of joy.

--Josephine Dickinson--