Yesterday wrestling, probing in
the tumbled dark,
fumbling through feathered moss,
quivering with an urgency to force
a passage into ecstasy.
Today he stands erect,
his smooth, spunky stem
exploratory,
unrestrained, thrusting with life
force.
Bullet-headed, brassy, raunchy,
round,
a poseur above his crisp, pert
trappings,
he falls open, lies back,
that the warming sun may finger
his guarded, private core.
Beside him, eager, agog,
the Virgin’s flower,
grabbing experience ahead of Candlemass,
her maiden head expectant,
shafting up,
stained with the green of
gaucherie;
anxious to be forward;
bride-white would become her,
could she wait,
hang her modest head in full,
fulfilling beauty,
breathe her frail, sweet scent,
her innocence.
Together now, close, on the
winter-bitten grass.
Too soon, too early.
Tomorrow brings them tears of ice,
weights of snow, blankets of sorrow;
their early flowering unremarked,
their ruin public, staining.
So end all false springs,
trust withering on an altar of
desire.
(January,
1989)
