A redhead at sunset
is an inlet of effortless pageantry.
A magician experiences ways of becoming an art,
garden, infidelities, and refusal to commit.
As a tributary, I have labored under false expectations.
You noticed parasites of some sort, or a fungus.
There were animal bones -- especially horse skulls
-- in your most scandalous Santa Fe period.
In the abyss, I expected you to save me.
An earlier enchantress delineated the subjugation
of a farmhouse porch light reminding me
of Saturday night desolation.
Every tire she pulled me closer,
somebody came up the staircase.
Teeth crushed new glimmering points in her halo.
In the stretches between sweethearts
you could put up a garden. Pay attention.
With shame gusting to ding sanitized jars
in the pantry, a prodigy works evenings
and weekends. Furious, she dares not move
brass weights with bare fingers in this clinic
where the palpitation of a rented-tux
bloodsucker prowls torn maps of tarpaper hollows.
So you think you see a safe bet? Taste the hondy.
Tend an orchard. Watch the downbeat
when youthful rebellion shatters Pyrex
boiling complications of first love. Yahoo, hooray,
in this score half is golden seduction
with an opportunity for ruins.
In the four pockets of my heart,
I keep finding more gizmos they left behind --
a bobby pin, an earring, the scrawl of a yo-yo.
Somewhere on the border where red hair overlaps
into blonde, you stand in a throbbing stillness
to seek a father's blessing. Hello? Come again?
You were not quite Cinderella, resolving to tickle
whenever I became too stern. All bathed in the burden
my devotion placed upon them. Today I scatter
crumbs from the kitchen table and enlist
as a New Age Holy Roller. Feed the birds. Please
don't master the discipline of meditation more
than piloting a Harley-Davidson, Heigh-ho, heigh-ho.
Anything more than one becomes many.
