A Winter’s Walk
This is of a love that’s ever (the smile
Of her appointment’s dentistry)
She defeats resistance. Her plumb bosom
To be round with it frankly, desire.
She keeps floral (––many aweing closer
To cascade her may ill afford.)
Summary, hers, mysterious air.
I’ve been much advised against her:
They say, “She’s nothing really.”
They are so right,
For when she troubles valuables
Devotion to her mads me to Bosch’d
Obsessing my days.
(There is a life
Warmth’d to pulsed, fleshed,
sensed with common approval.
Organization into being sings
From a reality turned even to an enchantment
Siren’d to me.)
But when she’s stranged I behold her
For what she is: fashionable.
The richly over-sexual.
Through the twigs float her eyes ––
No faith of worlds in them
Souless the orgasms in her dark sheets.
She’s yearn –– it’s my body she wants
And to be my mother
From World’d Too Much: The Selected Poetry of Russell Atkins, edited by Kevin Prufer and Robert E. McDonough © 2019 by Russell Atkins.