an interlude between to-dos

(written on Monday, July 9, 2007, at a midday break)

He woke at dawn and to-doodled the morning hours,
projecting how present work would lead to future profit,
until a convenient break in attention to business
allowed thoughts of her to return.
She was a loveliness he couldn’t stop
drinking deeply and he wondered why.

In the interlude between the cares of the day,
he imagined he heard a guitar playing a tango
and danced with her in the seduction
of a moonlit garden perfumed by flowering gardenias.

His romantic imagining soon gave way
to other thoughts of her the interlude released.
She was his metaphysician who metatangoed too!
She saw Being a marvelous, multicolored fabric
of beings woven vitally together–
an earthy cloth too wondrous for him to stop his gaze.

She was athlete too–physical, willful,
powered by a muscular desire to beat the foe.
Demure this dancer of tangos? Hardly.
“Dangerous” came to his mind first–
able to inflict pain not mere loss on an opponent.
Yet able, so ably, to gently coordinate
her limbed play with children
without the canine snarl of reddened teeth.

His interlude ended with his wondering
where she stopped and the world began.
She was so many beings he loved knowing
one by one or all together in a blur
creative in her changeability.
It was not capturing he knew as wanting her–
holding her down for his own timebound pleasure–
but delighting in the timeless frenzy of her freeness.

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the unkindest cut

(written on Tuesday, March 1, 2005, at daybreak)

His billfold seemed more youthful and less patriotic
since it had been on a low-income, no plastic diet.
Its breath smelled less the chew of greasy greenbacks
and more the leather holster of a lone cowboy.

It didn’t come ‘round much anymore
to salute the American Dream,
but stayed behind, shy of company
that used to call on business
before stocks fell and depression struck
and work was hard to find.

But the unkindest cut was
not lost portraits of tendered presidents,
nor demagnetized swipes of other peoples’ money,
nor forgotten deals on cards of calling past.
Gone were love’s pictures without a kiss goodbye.

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