Three Muses ... Late Night Trilogy

Three Muses ... Late Night Trilogy


in the sun-bleached haze of a
musty ragweed afternoon
Ani bolts from the dirt road
glides like a young deer
over the still-water-green ditch
and carves a zigzag path
through a field of tall grass
until at last from a distance
she gives me a final look
her fawn eyes
teasing
provoking
before she drops down
and slips out of sight
into the winnowing undergrowth
invisible
beneath the wind-wavering horizon
of wild oats and dusty weeds
hidden
beneath a rust fog
foaming over the rim of my sight line
in terrene clouds
throbbing with procreant pollen and seed
but when i follow her wayward path
through a screaming plague of cicada
and a cacophony of birdsong
warning the swelling air against
my ambiguous intentions
when i turn at last
to where i am sure
she is waiting
she is not there

at nightfall
Ramona insists
that i shower before bed
so she follows me with a wire brush
to the bath
and scrubs the stale summer film
from my body
like old paint ripped
from the wood
of a forgotten shed
until at last i am free
from the stench of my humanity
and she rubs me dry
with rosewater rags
from beneath the sink
her soft voice
giggling with alarmed pleasure
when she sees i am aroused
by her vigour and close
attention to detail
and there in the twilight
her lips find mine
as we drift into bed
slip between
languid sheets of cool cotton
warming quickly over and under
our trembling bodies
as she makes love to me
making love to her
in so many unrehearsed
and unimaginable positions
that by daybreak
we are so lost in pleasure
that i mistake her eyes for mine
and she wears my skin
as her own

it is four in the morning
and i confess that
this poem comes and goes
i have moments
when everything is clear
and then it all slips away
into the sudden insecurity
that if i write from the innermost
pulse of my heart
you may not understand
what i am saying
or worse
not care
but you see
i long so much for your attention
that my aching fingers
freeze like larkspur
caught in a sudden frost
and i can only watch
as the blue inky stains turn to bruised yellowing black
after so much tireless scribbling
after so many words written
then scratched out
only to be written again
filling every empty recess
of a blank page
so many words pouring outward
from an empty life
etched in a repetitious struggle
to convince myself that
by writing to you or for you
my life is not empty at all
so many words that somehow
shape what i feel
but even as i grasp at this hope
the words falter and fail
as each line and curve
as each stroke and dot
becomes fluid and restless
and breaks apart or congeals
into unrecognisable smudges
the unintelligible testaments of failure
that dance off the page
until the paper before me
is blank again