today i have a sadness holding onto me

like-heavy-feathered wings i’ve not asked for

it will travel me

through my autonomy

also unwanted

as what i do want is him

in my everydayness

touching me

looking into me

lightening the heaviness of my being

because poets don’t always get it right, do we

it is the weight that is unbearable

the universe within me

star-filled

and dream-spent

cusps and seafarers

and he is there

waiting in the firmament

casting his net

gathering my storied mystery

offering me up

another heavenly body

to his captain,

my captain

what is she to do

with her soft, attenuated

poetic self

her home a prison

her work a staggering bore

her world in a state of sensual soul shutdown

perhaps

perhaps set her mind otherwhere

a place more receptive to her than here

a place of wing and song

where the quick and wild-hearted mingle

in the half-light of creation

today i am

thinking that my life is otherwhere

the light setting

a world silhouetted

warm wind blowing through open windows

road and birds singing

as i aim for a landscape

without hooks or swithchbacks

one that only runs forward

in which the light

will only ever spark ahead

a rose is a rose is a woman

or, rather

this woman

soft, rounded, knowing

and when joyful

glowing a warm, heady scent

when not

will thorn a man

and ground him

cultivate and breathe

and bloom around

and within him

she likes the feel of it in her hand

smooth

and cool

in the shape of an egg

only heavier

light-catching

and dream-carrying

from the sea

of the universe

now hers

and gathering heat

today I am

swinging into a 7 am sun

i am intrigued

supple

and watching for webs

left by giants

today i am

godless but

full of god

he said that I am ravishing

that I would make a bishop kick through a stained-glass window

that he wanted to kiss every single freckle on his way up my arm to my limpid green pools

and I am enchanted

but he keeps me waiting,

waiting

maybe because he feels that I am still searching

and maybe he is right

and yet, this man

this man with his romance, controlled passion, mystery and ability to hold me without touch

this man may just sustain me

write a new lexicon that seeks to define me

a vocabulary that finds new ways into me

perhaps even rewrite me into a woman who could be described as satisfied

she could have been more convincing

more willowy or fey

but, still, her soul was expensive to keep

and in its need for poetry and favorable attention and beauty and the brush of hard fingers and abandon

she was a woman: a bruise, a promise, a story and a song

rather than some delicate creature archly situated at the bar of that night’s choosing