Poetry is hair cut
straight across your forehead
two blue plums and people talking
or thinking about not talking
then finally second thoughts.
Marriage vows, being bashful
the nakedness of time once written on a
coffee house stained napkin.
Warm hands cold from burnt-out paradigms
It glows like the storyteller's trance under a fire.
Brightly dressed Syrian women wearing
silks and sarongs, an agate ring brushing
cool away our inner voice.
Dignity, a kiss under a street lamp,
the ghost which haunts us, the hot stillness,
arid and sweltering droning on.
Poetry, the starved sould of myth and fairytale,
the layered fantasy chemise the Muse wears for
the artist. The lake at dusk with lanterns
lit. It is perpetual.
D. Claudia Ash
January 2005