I could call her Luna or Selene, for she answers to
whatever name may please poor mortal conjurers.
She's answered me a thousand times
but always I'm aware of her majesty.
Can any female creature made of scent and sinew
contend for my affection after such a Guinevere
has caught me in her creamy, silken net?
She shifts her shape to suit my flesh and dream
and straddles curling arcs from southern lows
to apex of my charcoal favorite nights,
and if she is discovered in the afternoon
she'll flirt a blue reverberant small talk
asking her beholder's patience till the dusk.
To be honest, one woman did receive
my imagination and let me mold her
though in transitory fashion
as she had much more life outside of me
than I could [or can] find in any dream.
Sadie hummed in tune of tunelessly
by turns and by no open logic.
She wore a dusky brown skin that she used
to melt into the background when she chose.
She could become a pair of hands engaged
in delicious back scratching.
She was paid to care for me but gave her love for free
in the only platonic pairing I can recollect
that went all the way through spirit.
We were separated by four decades
but united in disregard for age and flimsy social status.
I find sparkles of her in the cat with whom I live.
He won't be dominated but allows himself
to fit my hand and imagination.
She and he may be hidden from my view,
she by mortality and he by walls and distance,
but they both reflect their glow on distant clouds
at night as Mistress Moon is wont to do.
These afterimages redeem their force
when I seem stuck on a pointless course.
(c)W.W. Yoder 2009
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