with
practical hands
she
strips the petals of the artichoke,
braving
the thorns to reach the heart
and
hope, thinking not of those
evening
meals purely disdained, their
very
essence a botch-blotch upon florid china,
twice-vitrified,
steeled through
fire,
furnace hellish, roaring
orange,
beating against the bricks, and,
abstracted,
she registers the days, dates, she
has
had his kiss, a single
column
of black digits totted up as she
strips
the petals away
to
reach the heart, that
green
secret of hope and love,
ever
springing up, the spear-blade of
grass
snaking up between two slates of
pavement,
heavy as gravestones, and
she
exhales as bleak
November
blows coldly into icewhite
December
and
forced
merriment in a public square
blared
over by klaxon horns,
massed
crowds braying for a handful
of
sweets
so
much better, so much tastier, the
secret
heart of love at her core,
when
all was
finally
stripped away,
simmering,
as if bathed in the
light
of summer, the thick gold she
held
in her hands, proffered when
all
that was extraneous
had
been shorn away,
leaving
the heart naked, ready for
the
tearing of teeth, the savoring
of
scent again, a
marking
down of minutes, hours, weeks,
months,
years, the curious timetable of
numbers,
scripted, catching together, all
a-tangle,
a
fine mess of figures, and, in
each
one a thought, a pang, a
breath
lost, a tear shed, those
sins
of omission, venial, that dog
her
heels, snapping, unwilling yet to hear
ego
te absolvo,
graceless,
stateless, a mote of dust
caught
for a moment in his glance
before
the wind bears her
into
the back of beyond,
the
eternal that is love, and love
only
too
long a sacrifice/
can
make a stone of/
the
heart/
her
heart-stones clink-chink against each other,
making
that bright music she rises to
each
morning, the cup glancing against the saucer,
the
flames reaching up, blue-bright,
under
the kettle, warm her face, her
flesh
is as many fields, her words a
dowry,
her
touch a promise, unspoken still
