Charlie’s heart,
that impulsive pump,
stuttered now (and often)
its more explosive forces
long since spent.
His lumbago’d back
saw him stumble
over-plump and bent
along his vague
peregrinations.
The poor guy’s mind,
subject to its own
limited imaginations,
oft rested upon the
the snippets of conversation
found floating in foreign tongues
at unsophisticated cafes;
the soar of gulls angling into
the prevailing onshore winds;
his un-tragic list of lost loves.
These last sailed as sloops might
toward a gathering horizon;
a sight he sighed at;
it being of no small beauty.
Having turned his back,
as was his wont
though not his duty,
for as long as his constitutional took,
on the agility of man-made machinations;
those sleek, shorefront architectures,
darting, geometric renderings
of steel, wood, space and light;
a library swole with the wordly
work of well-commanded syllabaries;
still felt he fall upon him the fine,
great, ghost and magics
of what Woman, weirdly, was to him-
somehow mortar and pestle both,
a pattern un-emerged in Wonder’s weft,
an animated alter
for earnest surrenderings,
the collarbone hollow
a sacred place
designed for dappling
by lazy leaf-shadows
on late, late Autumn afternoons.
Laughing to breathlessness,
finally, at the inadequacy
of his unskilled word-sketches
he noted two modest ketches
as they tacked in tandem
at some distance.
Then stood Charlie still and silent,
his ankles in wraith-mist wrapped,
‘tween his toes an easy ooze of mud,
the gentle jostle of neap-tide waves
the gentlest rhythm did provide;
over which he found himself
whispering, with some insistence,
“Sharhzad”
and thought he ought
an ode compose
that it might taste
of chocolate, honey
milk and blood.
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