Cotillion

I place stamps on three postcards
then put them in the mailpost box
fortelling the steps of a diamond
studded past in long, open
streets.
I am loving hardened hearts
foretold with the flicker of
candles around a bath.

I am fixed to a dubious argument
which is for and against
the sight of Bronte, or Dickinson,
May Alcott, or Barret Browning,
the swift envy of our souls.
I proportion my body
through the dance of death
with a heart-wheel for a center
spinning like a top in time.
Living a small space.
Oh,that we are adrift
on a round glass earth, alive!
Alive through logic on
inward islands with
nowhere to go yet somehow happy.
Oh,that we live!

I repeat the minutes that force
the seasons to
wash into one and other and the
sorrow is like chipping away at
tough bark,
curious-looking plant life
makes a divide in the pale room
in which I am seated,
the books propped up on the
shelves appear hostile,
the pages of wily school days
linked to the sad shy poems by
men and women I have loved
so much as caramel candy or
the nile moon.

It is dark, too dark to see
enough of each other,
as the fluttering of pages now
become flapping wings that
mount like eagles.

I dream of an injured seagull.
You have a classic face and
I currently think on the
book edition of which I have
seen you on last as I save a
dated stamp that came along with
your postcard.
You words are as plump as can be
and steadier than I with
what you have scrawled in fast
ink.

Others who don't want to know
about me become glib and
want frantic words I cannot
give them.
I resort to waving repartee
like a gonfalon in a fantasy.
You have a classically girlish
woman's smile as I touch it
like a pussywillow.
I know by now I'm in a
big league baseball game,
the greetings begin as the
tale-spinners enter and rely
on esp.

You wish to resist because
you suddenly suffer with the
puddles of mud you wade
through,
your words all sound like
a hog-caller's world
someone remarks that babies
are gurus, but ugly.
I will ask the gods to
give me the strength to
see all.

If Wild Aurora were here again
she could break the wishbone
and embrace the melody of the
summer bees,
but it is nearer to winter and I rest
with the mistress of the house,
I have found warmth and come
from behind physical talk.

Wait just a little while and
I will dream the meaning of
meanings for you.
Just outside the window the
ice is melting into a flashback
of riptide.
A pretty ponytail makes me
look savagely beautiful
for years to come
so like other spirits I will
roar like a lioness
without you even knowing it,
goodbye for now, old gal.