TENDERNESS
April 23/2020
April 23/2020
Blown rose awaits midnights
when her skirts and her face and her lacy flesh
will be bitten by frost
It’s way too early for that
Her bud is still tight now
She is precocious and she is doomed to wait
She will need patience
to come to know herself as she was meant
She will need such restraint
to know herself blowing, blowing
blown
She hangs back - see her - in a women’s way
Out of the way
Awaiting a young frost’s milk teeth
as mother awaits
as mother awaits, too full,
the nibbles of her nursling
She attends
swaying but not falling
abides until the season can come
of the true and final essence
essence atomized
all the way
and all the way
Abides until perfume
should be spent and spent all spent
from the hollow tender bowls
from the pit
Through yarning unreeling unravelling fargoing months
of being peeled back slow by sun
tissue by tissue
and unspun
and undone
Through eons of showing the colours between the colours
she waits to arrive at some kind of end
when no one comes tunnelling for pollen anymore
and no one plucks
Hers is the age when no one is asking
even in the backs of their deflowered minds
Love me or love me not?
Hers is the age when she is so bitten
that no one would think
to steal her head
and so she is left
to nod it down
over her milked and given self
Here I come she says
here I come to the end that waited for me
here I come to the arms that open
And when I come
I come
chewed
abandoned
blown
when her skirts and her face and her lacy flesh
will be bitten by frost
It’s way too early for that
Her bud is still tight now
She is precocious and she is doomed to wait
She will need patience
to come to know herself as she was meant
She will need such restraint
to know herself blowing, blowing
blown
She hangs back - see her - in a women’s way
Out of the way
Awaiting a young frost’s milk teeth
as mother awaits
as mother awaits, too full,
the nibbles of her nursling
She attends
swaying but not falling
abides until the season can come
of the true and final essence
essence atomized
all the way
and all the way
Abides until perfume
should be spent and spent all spent
from the hollow tender bowls
from the pit
Through yarning unreeling unravelling fargoing months
of being peeled back slow by sun
tissue by tissue
and unspun
and undone
Through eons of showing the colours between the colours
she waits to arrive at some kind of end
when no one comes tunnelling for pollen anymore
and no one plucks
Hers is the age when no one is asking
even in the backs of their deflowered minds
Love me or love me not?
Hers is the age when she is so bitten
that no one would think
to steal her head
and so she is left
to nod it down
over her milked and given self
Here I come she says
here I come to the end that waited for me
here I come to the arms that open
And when I come
I come
chewed
abandoned
blown
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