One of My First Blank Verse Pieces
Breakfast of Solomon
Before you augered through the winter crust,
hepatica corralled within your fist,
I watched the yearly running of this scene.
The rutting buck rubbed his horns on bark.
He seemed to love the tree, the tender green,
unaware that it turns blazing red
before it makes a boney-fingered reach
for God. And through my winter, I rubbed bark.
I threw my arms around a wooden lover
with hopes that I could sand it soft as flesh.
But you shook me from my hibernation.
Now in a splurge of warmth, we resurrect
the green. Our red is not the rouge of death.
It’s the glow that smithies us together.
We smelt and flow into a single sword
then ache and crave if not in line of sight,
when not near enough to smell the other.
We are new lovers among old friends who
only like to nosh. Roused, fresh and hungry,
from those fleshless nights, we chew each other.
Can you tell your bite from mine? Who spoons
who? What does it matter?
In this morning
of us, you splay like a biscuit for me
and lie prepared as I flow over you,
sawmill gravy, into every crevice.