curved as a lip pouting for a kiss

sponge of sunlight,
my tiniest
filaments stand in ceremony
to your song of color

insects decide to walk the labyrinth
of your perfumed path

are you tickled by these
cellular inspectors
sipping your sweet wine of particulates

would you have preferred to be a robin
burdened with the sky’s
most unique song

do you wish you were the moon
a whole planet of petals
with an atmosphere of cologne

a dolphin bathing in the coral medicines
of an oceanic garden?

you itch
when you are closed
                          shy & anxious

unconcerned with weather
              death or dementia

you are the earth’s soldier of love,
                                    desire

yet––what do you know of it?

Look, in the early light, 
   Down to the infinite 
   Depths at the deep grass-roots; 
      Where the sun shoots 
In golden veins, as looking through 
   A dear pool one sees it do; 
   Where campion drifts 
Its bladders, iris-brinded, through the rifts 
      Of rising, falling seed
   That the winds lightly scour—
Down to the matted earth where over 
   And over again crow’s-foot and clover
      And pink bindweed
      Dimly, steadily flower.

             Dancing dandelions
   and buttercups in the grass
remind me of other summer
flowers, simple blossoms

roses and tiger lilies by the wall
         milk pod, sumac branches
lilacs across the road, daisies, blueberries
snaps, cut violets

             three years ago still grow in my mind
as peonies or planted geraniums, bachelor buttons
in downy fields filled with clover
lover, come again and again up fern

path upheld as memory’s perennial
against stern hard-faced officers of imprisonment
and cold regulation more painful than lover’s arms
or flowers charming but not more lasting.

No, the wild tulip shall outlast the prison wall
no matter what grows within.

I have robbed the garrulous streets,
Thieved a fair girl from their blight,
I have stolen her for a sacrifice
That I shall make to this mysteried night.

I have brought her, laughing,
To my quietly sinister garden.
For what will be done there
I ask no man’s pardon.

I brush the rouge from her cheeks,
Clean the black kohl from the rims
Of her eyes; loose her hair;
Uncover the glimmering, shy limbs.

I break wild roses, scatter them over her.
The thorns between us sing like love’s pain.
Her flesh, bitter and salt to my tongue,
I taste with endless kisses and taste again.

At dawn I leave her
Asleep in my wakening garden
(For what was done there
I ask no man’s pardon.)