Inspiration

Furtively she moves on cat’s miniature feet—
Hurts heavy with meanings of history’s unsaid.
Tiptoeing on and tiptoeing out—a darling of the mind,
Everything obviously working
According to scheme of things.

Remember the nights of whingeing Pom,
And how she reeled, tottered, and foamed,
Hands on stomach, in that sweatshop she undearly calls home;
Recall your hateful impulses, imagining how me she touches,
With that falling and that rising as the sun falls and rises.

Sheets of past indignations—muted witnesses to many unions.
Loveliness now repays loneliness its due;
My pains of the present your relief from pains of the past;
And the fading scent tells me who she loves most: It’s you.




December 1, 2006, 9:00 a.m.
Rev. December 4, 2006, 2:30 p.m.