John R. Mitchell Academy of American Poets Prize, 2017

 

The two, these soft, those, sleepwalking cherubs,

 

Clad in perfectly toasted corduroy and cheeks like warm wedding cake,

 

Hair, the shade of bubbling brick, melting like waves of calm magma, wafts of Lamiaceae

 

that sting the chapped O’d shaped lips.

 

They appear, like the trickling yawn of springtime, like soft sleepy kisses on new grass

 

that tickles the lips and pink fingertips, feeling deeply and without care in the miracle of dirt.

 

Hugged of the same fresh, warm fabric, perhaps with buttery pink roses stitched on the

 

corners, arcane initials swirling frolicked and barefoot in candied mint green.

 

Behaving like bird feeding old lovers, sending me at the same second, two smiles a

 

cabbage and a carrot wide, that seems to add forty years to both their age.

 

He, lopsided navy tweed cap, that straightened out his big, lumbered body.

 

She, eyes so sunken in, almost gracefully spooned out, light blue marbles placed within each.

 

I wept for I took such beauty as blindness,

 

Then danced as she stood on her tiptoes and kissed his large cheek.