Green Thumb

She stood at the sink in the kitchen
and doused their purple passion
for the third time that week

He stood in the dining room
his hands on the shoulders of a chair
watching something outside

She thought of last summer
him at the end of the train platform
watching for her
stretching to see her

She turned over a fuzzy leaf
squirted more poison

Kisses on the platform
lunch at the UN
the 3 o'clock train to his house

She scraped tiny white carcasses off the leaf

She met his eyes as she remembered
how they'd laughed
naked and sweaty
back at his house that day

She set the dripping plant between them
and watched the dead aphids pool in the poison
on the counter

His Hands

They're just big
he'd say
as he turned his hands over
fingers spread
palm
back
palm
back
trying to see as she did


She loved his hands
perfect nails he'd clipped once a week
and had never bitten
broad square palms
that could cover
entirely
each of her breasts
fingers almost two inches longer than her own


They were the hands that held her
caressed her
They lashed out when he was angry
condor wings
ready for flight


She touched that finger
the finger that pulled the trigger
It had known the warmth inside her
but it was cold now
intertwined with the others
over the hollow of his chest

Committal

There is something heartbreaking
about a friend who is normally
paint splattered and rusty
in a starched white collar and suit

You said it, but more heartbreaking
to me was his lumbering walk up the aisle
in those shining clothes
And the flaccid feel of his
newly-shaven cheekon my lips
in the receiving line And the pink tinge
around his eyes
that searched over my head

And the slight flare of his nostrils
as he introduced me to his sister

I'll Call You Dusk

Dusk absorbs light on its way to darkness
and hinders the eye’s understanding
All that was clear in the chartreuse trees
becomes murky with the lowering sun

Even the pressure of your fingertips on my breast
though it lingered through the remainder of my day
moistening me
has become a rumor

Night falls after the last silver glow of orange
and I try to know your lips again
but they are gone

If I had known it would be the last time
I would have tasted all of you
I would have burned the feel
of your silky back onto my fingertips and
forced forever your nipples into the palms of my hands

Ethereal

I recite my favorite poem
and dream of a remedy for these
fantasies that keep me up at night
occupied in the twilight of dawn
until I rise and go to you

Not in a moist garden
lush with the heady scent of jasmine
my soles licked by dew
my ankles tickled by the wet lace
of my gauzy nightgown

No I suffer you in a gray cubicle
in the basement of a stark white building
and stare into your eyes
the color of the sea on an October morning

Longing

Is it an illusion in which I delay
as your hair fades gray and thin
while I wait for news that we are
unshackled , unfettered, free

Free to know each other the way the sun
during an eclipse knows
to be cradled by the moon and accept being sheltered
left with only its bright shadow showing

Or are we as close as we will ever be
the situation between us
growing elderly as well
paper-frail but like iron too

But each of us knows
don’t we
as a wolf knows his mate from across
the frozen wasteland in which he survives
day after day on morsels of mice
and frozen lake

We knew like the wolf knows
didn’t we
drawn by the familiar scent and dip of the head
before the howl from before time
and the answer
from across gentle hills
long and low
before this time in which I sit
silently howling still

The Colors of November

Black clouds blow mostly bare trees,
their branches whipped low.
The green leaves of summer have gone
brown, chasing an 18 wheeler’s passing,
heading toward McDonald’s up the road.

Today it’s an ugly place, that called Five Corners
for the number of streets converging.
Blinking pink and blue neon,
hawking 99 cent lunches and selling gas.

It’s filth laid bare, blown by cool breezes.
And there’s the problem,
cool breezes…not bitter cold or even chilly,
not requiring a favorite coat drawn about your neck
or gloves, socks. I’m in shorts, for Christ’s sake!
Short sleeves, too.

The breeze is out of place,
wrong,for this day, for my mood.
It does nothing to lift me from the grit of dread
I cannot name. It’s been so long gone, this feeling,
that I’d forgotten it existed,
but here it is, full-blown and coarse,
old gray wool and dusty burlap.

It is times like these I wish I could hibernate,
sleep the winter through and wake to spots of snow
flowered with purple crocus and yellow forsythia.