Sitting in the sunshine, softer than silk,
copper braids resting against her back,
she knows nothing (yet) of knuckles that
bruise scraps of skin in midnight rooms.
Curtains fly up in rosy rooms.
The day goes down with a lavender bruise.
Champagne lace sticks to that fragile back
as she offers up sweet stainless silk.
Thirty-four before seven, but
twenty-six after six.
In a bewitching mist, bodies
are exchanged, old for young,
clean for soiled–male for female.
Half past six, but
thirty before seven.
Shoulder blades come undone.
Ankles turn into fat drippings.
Water, flushed with flesh,
absorbs bucolic knots, along
with the sweat that girdles them.
On a warm June evening, peach incense wafts through the hallways of our house.
Kofu, Japan
June 10th, 2016
Outside our town there was a glade
where coats of comely mallow swayed.
Their beauty made the billows weep
and caused blithe bumblebees to leap
upon those vivid violet thrones
to gather dusty yellow stones.
The wooers chose that pretty place
to slyly bask in joy’s embrace.
Each morning at the stroke of nine
they hurried past the prickly pine
to wallow in warm waiting arms
and revel in each other’s charms.
______________________________
“Plight of the Peevish Peddler” is a 2,360 word narrative poem, written in iambic tetrameter that I wrote about a year and a half ago. This excerpt is from the poem’s second section.
sundry folly 