With age she’s found an orient

in the self possessed dancer who stands

taut like blonde wheat

her shoulders remind me of water

causing the sharpness of stone to soften

her clavicle bones, two emotions

running together

I will always sit

on the opposite end of the table

and fall in line, slipping my

baser urges into shade, though I

tremble to touch her energy

quick and nimble like wild fire

people and their oil mixed with water

even as they

flicker in and out

like old camera film run together

double exposure

different stories

I think

as my eyes follow her thoughts

catching on the windy day like

urgencies lost

of what might have been

in the solace of imagination

where I roam unbidden

a cough drop tasting of her mouth

rolled in mine, briefly finding, union

in that flung place, we are lying together

washed over with setting dusk

the outline of our desire

stark in relief

real flesh

living

real hours

spent burning with fever

for the evoking of her

hairline, how her cheek bones

catch light like

glasses of water might seem

gold dust to the thirsty

I suspect they have always

sought her surround

even as she laments losing

whatever that mercurial thing is

women possess

in easy abundance

as the slender cat will be

elegant even as it

reaches

to kill.