Poem For My One-Legged Lover, the Wine Glass, No. 44

POEM FOR MY ONE-LEGGED LOVER, THE WINE GLASS, NO. 44


A chinaberry in front of a red barn;
Two chinaberries, one hers, one mine.
She observed from an angle
That would give the tree a background of blue.
Lifted her eyes to see
Light surround the topmost leaves like a nimbus.
She saw light disembodied from its origin,
Did not see the green.
She had obscured the scene
Into a miracle invented by the mind.
From above, the spectral stretched down
its arm of light
Touched her thighs.
I sensed she felt she was loved,
But I was not the lover.
I gazed at the red clay ground
That in sunlight became vaporous
As a flame that would burn her away,
Leave me responding to something in absentia,
Although present and ungraspable.
At the base of this tree,
yellow dots among the green,
I looked down while she looked above
To see light flying with angel's wings.
I saw the yellow berries rip off
their yellow clothes,
Sink into the earth's embraces,
become trees.


Duane Locke

Posted over on Motherbird