Sacrifices

Pomegranates, poems and coffee
in a land of barley fields - morning calm;
Pasture and vast expanses; these symbols
of consistency and balance you sow
and I make fruitful; Segments arrest
our attention, fragments of lips and arms.
Kapolei beads and Kataifi for the man
whose neck, dark hair and eyes swim
endless in my frame of mind . . .

This passion for a tongue that tastes
the sweet, penetrable weakness
This angel that raps on dream’s door
and paints colors on the terrazzo of walls;
Shadows slide from the seeds of his eyes -
I drift inside, somewhere around the sun,
moon, similar planets and stars
Lamb and mortal sacrifices - delicate
sensitivities, dolorous salvations?

Sacrifices II

Night and day, this difference
of mandolins, verse and temples,
dark hair, some day, will turn to grey
Beads, bracelets, rings and pendants -
sunlight falls through autumn leaves;
Everything, even love will come with
its own direction, time and way
Mandolins in moonlight, soft poems
and firelight, captured in the dark pools
of dark eyes, your hands around
my waist form a sequence of letters;
a foreign tongue, wanders nomadic,
through my arid desert. Your hair
tied and braided - my eyes closed
to circumstantial evidence

Sacrifices III

There, a simple breakfast waits;
the coffee brews - aromas ascend
the stairs . . . soft sunlight breaks
through tempered, tinted glass.
I compose conversation in my mind; 
and devotions for the annotations
of your lips (reflections willing
to sacrifice poems)
Feathers, drums and native flutes;
songbirds weep for long lost notes.
Last night’s stars quietly asleep – me,
wondering, is there enough sun
for one more photograph?

Deborah Russell, © 2006
 
 Image: Prayers in Kamakura, D. Russell, 02