|
|
|
The Kitchen Table
We sit, separated by tall pilings of hot seeded muffins,
the smell of rich almond rising with the steam of dark
Egyptian coffee edged with lacy froth. Long tan legs
drawn up together beneath a fading yellow T-shirt,
slept in for the feel and dusky smell of him.
We smile and nod within that comfort known only to the
rare and finally now content. Your scented warmth encircles me,
carrying me gently upward, held within the curved surface
of the invisible. I am home.
Afterward, you smile, hands clasped behind the head. rocking
slightly upon the straight legged chair. The day is sweet; hazy honied
patterns stretch across the kitchen's floor. Tilting further backward,
brown eyes close, concealing narrow shadows, which soon shape and
lengthen, inside the eyes of those who love briefly.
The Dancer
She stands barefoot by the open door,
slipping easily through well scrubbed floors
and the scented breath of candle's wax.
Captive of the evening breeze, a fringed white feather,
the inborn sense of flight to hold her, balanced,
arms extended, a dancer upon gleaming slivers.
She wears sheerness, hibiscus and peridot, crocheted in
silk as stars crocheted into the evening. Thoughts that sway
with willow trees, the heart resides in flawless amber.
Humming, back arched, fingers curled in perfect pose,
she remains, awaiting both the coming of the silkworm
and the wider side of the horizon.
Magda
Compassions' words, a child's eyes,
a warmth there misrepresented, misperceived.
The pause between illusions, like sparrows'
breath, is quick, fleeting, unnoticed in the small.
Spun gauze of misted gray blends well into
great oceans and dusk's half-light. To dream
within the form of clouds, shapes named,
determined, given life, by sight veiled in rising lashes.
Seabirds guard the boundaries of a pearled sky,
unaware, unknowing in their vantage point, of worlds below
turned earth. There creatures curl, in trails narrowed,
without shoulders, unforgiving.
Anne Fraser
|
