Don't Play With Fire, Unless You Can Handle Getting Burned

We lay on a stretch of sand.
The tide came in.
The tide came in.

Once we talked about angels.
No; we talked many times of angels.
I am convinced they were not listening.
I know they would have stopped me
from choosing the brightest of reds
from the sea-side garden.
And yet my flower is of fallow earth,
and for its bounded beauty, incomplete.

And I, telling the rose it is thorned,
feeling the smooth line of its stem.
A product of breeding, I am told.
They have taken the daring
out of flowers. But you, your body smooth,
your smiles thorned,
are worth poetry.

I remember death and the children, I said.
The wind swept your words clean.
I heard only your lips.

Then I will meet you:
under hanging leaves in the old garden,
near a river, running careless,
in the dark when lights are unlit
and only the lilt of your laughter
and my hand will cover the spotted tiny pricks of blood
and the leaves slipping through your fingers.

Posted by: hitokiriyuki at July 15, 2005 21:45 | link | comments
poetry