For Ranvier

Women upon whose swanny necks blue veins outstand,
whose physiques, in all ways, sinuously demand
and throatily proclaim themselves
sisters to the earth on which they lovely tread,
descendants of the skies
at which their cloud-whet, petaled eyes
are ever aiming;

upon such women,
along the bony housing
of those cables, thick, of nerves,
along straight spines beneath
whose vital vertebrae pulse
such sweet and supple sympathies
and mute, white-blinding pains;
there, where, through dendrite tentacles spectacular,
no slight miracles of feeling leap
node to node,

might one plant such kisses,
such liply gifts as may take root
and yield some fruit or flower
which men imagine
in that vivisected hour
when, awake at dawn,
they deep and meekly seek

within

or look quite through
the cracking plaster on the bedroom ceiling.