"...though a block away you feel distant the mere presence
changes everything like a chemical dropped on paper
and all thoughts disappear in a strange quiet excitement
I am sure of nothing but this, intensified by breathing"
- O'Hara

I am in solitude: paper motion
beneath curtain sway – come
on in, boy.

And although I thought it in
flames, the letter is still here –
I see it sighing

in the milkweed jar, like a tongue
at the curve of your lip. And I
cannot focus.

I imagine paper lilies, glass, and
fragments of cotton. I am against
a fence, the course

severed - painted blue. It pierces,
beloved. My hands drill copper
sunsets, light your way,

but it is too late. The tongue, rinsed
over stone, pushes words to red -
fingers that bleed, bind over bone.

And it is almost spring, my love.
Your scent is strongest then -
where colors stretch to sky and

I lie in fields of poetry. The sun
steady overhead, I await release.
But will it come?

You see, loneliness has leveled
my back, bits of salt fall from
the clothesline – cut from

a branch of the heart, they stir
these eyes liquid blue. My canvas,
a suture, a tear that I finger on

my dress. And quiet as pressed
drapes, my brush rests on the
sill – a silhouette on borrowed film.



©2006 by Cherilyn Ferroggiaro