Asylum

is what we sought, is it not?

One from widowhood

the other from something similar.

Your face is all wrong, for me, I mean

though I said it didn't matter, and actually,

we both wear our long faces well.

There is Rapunzel' s gold in the graying of your hair

hanging down your back like loose reins

of a horse begging to be saddled.

There are problems -- not with us -- with the world:

tsunamis, plagues, genocides, scrawny bawling infants

with swollen bellies of air, which makes of our circumstance

no matter its reasons, but luxury.

Mon Dieu, but we suffer histrionically, and over what?

My conscience is a trinity of mirror

reverberating to infinity.

If only there were a thundering gut, gangrenous limb, political upheaval

or climactic disaster burying us in rubble, to justify such.....need.

There is none but the twain hearts' ragged pulsing, stubbornly raging

after asylum.

Come now:

We've got the promise of Spring,

you with fruit trees in the fields

I with tomatoes giant as juicy kisses.

Grapes will vine and pears pool to pinkish

round bottoms, and worms will channel topsoil

making way for water.

Let all perform their tasks, as we look

upon our trowels with dispassion.

If something is to blossom between us,

it will.  But it had better be because

the rain is late, the clouds monstrous in

their protracted pregnancies, the pangs

ever and ever closer to a birthing

inevitable as sunrise.

Copyright Julianza Shavin 2008