The Poetry Mistress and the Flesh and Blood Wife

Even when I dream, she wants my body.
Such a slut, she doesn’t care that my
wife is sleeping soundly beside me.
It’s never about love with her.
The hormones are red hot
and something must be done.

My wife cooks such great meals for me.
But what does the other care.
The more I eat, the more that banshee
leaves me hungry.
My wife buys me a new watch.
But this calculating mistress
dangles words before my eyes.

It doesn’t bother her that she’s a whore
and everybody knows it.
No sneaking her off to a hotel room.
She marches brazenly up to my study,
lures me away from every
promise I’ve ever made,
everyone I’m close to.

I can’t deny that she’s seductive.
Some nights she’s just plain beautiful.
Other nights, a worn out hag but,
even then, she tempts.
What choice have I?
A man has needs.
and writer’s block
has not been getting any.

Marrying a Man with Children

The object is to
laugh together, effortlessly and naturally,
to feel more at home
than you thought possible,
for it not to be terrifying, formidable,
but a wellspring of happiness,
the fatiguing kind
that comes from being made so much of.
And then there’s the reality,
that silence of the oldest child,
glare from the youngest,
helpless look on the face
of the man you’re to marry.
The object is to
reimagine this as the original object.

Esmeralda

Her voice had an edge.
There was definitely grit in her bearings.

She seemed exquisitely full of herself
but with memories of the residue
when her tide was at its lowest.

She looked as if her mind
had just aced her master’s degree
and was working on her doctorate.

I stood there motionless
like a lazy dog in the sun.

This one was as slippery as the seeds of a watermelon.

I slipped away
and she closed the door behind me.

Her face melted from behind pebbled glass.

A Pond That Doesn’t Even Have a Name

August twilight, pond-side,
crickets shirr, bullfrog bellows,
swallows skim the river for insects
school of fish slither just below.

Tiny frogs hitch a ride
on floating bay-root,
water bug legs ride the surface tension,
purple flies dart in and out of reeds

A turtle pokes his head out of water,
inhales, then slips down below
with his latest breath.
A bandit raccoon scrapes between rocks.
A heron beak, like a trigger,
is cocked and ready to fire.

There’s so much sound within the silence,
so much movement to the calm

Helianthus

So adoring of the sun,
you’d melt to broth
in its warm flirting rays
if it weren’t for your rough and hairy stem,
and roots down in the minerals of the earth.

I feel for the unrequited side of you,
those winning young charms
so optimistic in the light of June,
vulnerable, endearing,
pushing skyward at great risk
unlike the comfortable shrubs and roses down below.

And yet, that struggle to hold your head up,
despite the downcast, pensive fate
of such a heavy head,
is a Summer etude,
not a dirge.

Every year, the god has you and betrays you,
as you reach up once more from the soil
and into his arms,
opening up your petals,
attired in his favorite colors,
revealing a bud still loyal and needing,
always turning to face him
as if, even in your despair,
even in your Autumn death,
the seeds of love are sprung