Excerpt
BODY LANGUAGE (C) 2001 Liz R. McMillan

I feel like a butterfly
with one wing stretched from the glistening cocoon
completely unfolded and intimate
When the sun puts to bed the moon
this is the form of the tease
the body language of a woman's eye

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THE GODS OF OLYMPUS
Upon convergence of the Planets
For my daughter, Cynthia

The gods of Olympus are met
in our Western sky tonight
lured by the seductress, Aphrodite,
basking in the afterglow
of an evening sun.

She claims to have disrobed
for only three--*
Paris, the Trojan shepherd prince
for which she won the golden apple
Anchises, in whose loving arms
she conceived her son Aeneas
and Adonis whom she takes
to her couch each six-month.

But, tonight, a little after sunset,
she shamelessly bared her brilliance
to the assembled company
and the voyeur, Earth.

Tugged by relentless Time,
they move on,
each on his eternal path
to meet again at even
some distant millennium hence
gathering once more
to watch the golden goddess
bare her unfading charms.

Would that our mortal paths
should bring you and me here then
to view them once again.

(C)2001 Wesley Combs, *footnote: the quotation of Aphrodite was from the Greek Anthology