To My Wife Joyce Standeford
My mind's a naturalistic blur;
She is a hazy green image
pressed up against the lens
Our hands press against each other
only separated by the glass;
her body is in the shape of crucifixion
tired arms sagging, feet clinched
But she sprung from a garden
once clothed in leaves and life;
I will die with her, a green tree.
My Joy, sweet, true,
Greenish in petals, nature's favorite hue
You've reached the hill-tops, and
The sun's yellow flame
Is now a streak of red, racing past us
To the land of the dead
And one day we will meet it there.
Day unfolds Joy's velvet face;
She yawns, stretches her
Round slight jaw at the yellow
sky. I die for her; she dies too.
Her desire is for flesh foods;
Her groans consume my logic; fire
Clothes her nakedness, her womb
She gasps for breath and wants
To drink the sadness of men.
My Joy, sweet, true,
Your body's green, tears blue
Body bowed, droplets of dew
Do all but taste your sweetness
And look how sorrowful you shine
Spinning your petals
To turn water into wine
How proud you are of what only the sun
Has done; I poke gently your stretched skin,
Feel the strained tenuous echo
Of strings I've played within
Wrapped in your body
I feel enraptured now as then.
I die for her and she dies too.
Her heat gasps with the warmth
Of glowing coals within her, fiery;
I quit my desire, strangle myself
With my own bone, cut short
To calm the bursting blood; red-faced,
The strength within me starts to bud
So I am young once more and willing
To be dumb again in love.
My Joy, sweet, tenuous,
I once could play you soft and timorous
Tears swashing green upon your skin
Our morning dew did know no sin.
But dusk falls rapidly upon us
Skin once beautiful now onerous
Wrinkles us in shame, still honor finds us
In the dirges that remind me
Of the life that's lost behind us.
My Joy, sweet, tender, kind
How proud and sorrowful you shine
I must carry you within
Buried bodies know no sin;
You are beautiful and bright
Burn your brightest here tonight
And as dusk begins to call
Let us here upon it fall
Our closely sewn shadows touch silk, the cloth of our doom
And the curtains of death do shroud us in eternity's womb.
Don V Standeford
|