1970 Spring sprawled
on your parents' blue living
room rug
covered with sheets
white paper, acrylics, soft white
brushes I couldn't work them
nor swim in your pond
amidst the rushes
I felt completely
lost what to do
with your tools
a beauty that was yours only
painting
away
even
Surrealistic Pillow couldn't rescue me
with some clue to entrance
into the garden where you dined

The Source where Art was served.

My river of creativity was dammed,
had flowed into grief over
Dad's cancer blaming
flooding me
with fear that you, too would reject me.

Then, there was you
saying you were seeing someone new,
that I was too sad
and there was no me
without the possibility of loving the way
of you: thin lips, gray eyes,
I only existed in your awe of me
when I'd been
enough

enough on the bed,
mouthing your thrill,
your chest was still hairless (a little concave) your tongue delicious inside me I held
your perfect sensibility

I'd found a way into your Art then
though your parents hated me with silent disapproval,
they didn't mind anything else
that you loved

you
were the stoned music
you
were sex and love
you were me
sitting in a small den,
my hand up as high as I dared
on your thigh
with your mother skulking
in the nearby clean kitchen


at first I 'd been your wise wench
but later I felt like a wet animal
on their sofa, with their son
wondering what exactly
was wrong with me....
who made me
so inferior?

I discovered too late that
it was not me,
but our fearful parents
to whom
sex was not beauty
budding
they all four feared
the young Jewish woman
ready to give all she had
to a shy tall Christian artist
who smoked too much pot
and loved his parents very much,
or so he claimed.

I thought then that I was unworthy
it was somehow my doing
that pain killing my father
demanding of me
to always be virginally lonely,

and now, thirty years later
i find you online, and you fell into addiction
I have my health, I'm younger now
yet amongst friends and family,
I find that I still slip into
a fissure of sadness
that's been carved so deeply
in me, so deep
that even when painting or potting,
this pain of rejection refuses to heal,
except while making love,
as if only someone reaching up
inside of me
can touch and heal my pain.