On the Hook     

          Love is you in my eyes and dreams.

I, though man, pine like the bard's lady

of the damask cheek, but with

a melancholy of prism'd grays.

I swim the stream of your

remembered eyes, unmeasured embrace,

your verse.  You are my secret poem,

my sun, rain, wind, a universe unparalleled.

Drowning in life's weary waters

I stroked your electric waist, trembling;

iI became anchored, then otherwise unmoored.

Tonight the moon is cloaked in a

doom of clouds, and the jealous rain

obtrudes upon my heart like a shroud.

I need the ripple of your skin

beneath my palms, need to wrap you,

be wrapped, and lie imperceptibly

turning with the cosmos, a constellation

all our own.  Oh, this alone!

But the bloodened hook is tenacious,

you are another's catch.

You strain, fins flailing

          glistening twilight tears.

I can only wait.

Always, I will wait:

a torment, an ecstasy.

Know this,

my sibilant sail

my avatar

my dolphin's dirge

          my calcified star.

            Copyright Julianza Shavin 2008