Of Sonia
My heart-woman is Sonia, no other.
Her mouth is sweet; her you-know-what is sweet;
Her breast is sweetbread; her thighs are sweetmeat.
She is champion ivory, dreamy cream.
To couple her is to porch in an orchard—
To savour accessible Paradise—
Milk and honey, loaves and fish, bread and wine—
A league of happiness in one fair frame.
Abundant’s her posh nudity, enough
To satisfy and inspire the poet
Who claims her love, to persevere a-bed.
Nirvana’s made flesh when Love is wanton,
So dew beflowers each limb, and nothing is
Sorrow, save the parting after pairing.
Struggle
The shouted whisper of a turning page
Is as intangible as Love, but hear
Two bodies turn in sheets, undulating;
They chant out Beauty, enchanting Beauty….
The first command is “Breathe!” But the last is
“Repent!” Bright nakedness of Lust becomes
Memories of candles, moonlight, until
Death abruptly interrupts “Corruption.”
Too sad a gospel is that, I believe.
Don’t be inhuman, inhumane, hurtful:
That’s enough scripture for Love to obey.
Am I solely lousy? I love wrongly,
Or am I right? I can’t define Virtue?
Yes: Something beautiful about her face….
At Puumala
Along berried ground, that semi-marine
Bush, bog, fat with butterflies, near shady
Water, we step—slog—inescapable
Venus and inexorable Cupid—
Loving to tumble and clench and couple
Prodigiously, in our melting tumult,
In the sauna, where sweat shines upon us
Like strands of steel. That Pleasure awaits us.
Already, you’re well a sizzling woman—
Your bones radiant under encircling
Sunlight, my Kalevala nymph, lovely nymph,
And I’m thy hot, phosphorescent poet.
You cut a green trophy—the birching leaves—
And thrash us with overjoyous tremors.
At Puumala (II)
The sauna fire is a cantering blaze;
Our sweat grants us an ecstatic finish.
We ladle out morsels of water that
Hit hot stones as an overhanging splash.
Steam foams up, then vanishes in fresh sweat—
A drifting beneficence, or silver
Effusion: We both bath in fusing light.
The leaping strike of water on scorched stones—
The burst of it—equals a squall, a storm
Of phosphorescence, as do you, in bed,
When I’m hot stone and you are cool water.
But there’s no fog in our union, no mist,
And we gasp, not for air, but for more Joy.
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