When A Man Loves A Woman

That song is very valentine-y, but who can't help but love Percy Sledge?

Also,

I think, that perhaps I have come to the end of the affair poem.

The one I couldn't get a handle on for a very long time.

This is the not-cheesy, not-sleazy, nor ridiculous version.

Perhaps I'll do a purely-lust, tawdry version later.

Who can say for sure?

But this one features all the usual motifs.

Seas.

Birds.

Blue eyes.

Hope you aren't getting tired of them yet.

Tried and true, you know?

So here.

Is the affair poem.

Dawn

Like the winged bird

I cannot catch, you

Are gone.

A whisp of smoke

As you disappear

On the horizon

Of the morning light.

-

Slipping through my fingers

Like so many grains of sand,

As my hands clutch at the twisted sheets,

Empty,

With the familiar indent

Of two.

A dangerous number,

As you slide away

Down narrow side streets,

Blue eyes blending into Thursday sky.

-

We let out our sails

To billow in the sunshine

Of the day,

As we sail across separate seas.

You, the strong and cold Pacific,

Blue and deep, jagged.

I will be your mild Atlantic,

With shores

Thronged with flocks

Of seagulls and tourists.

-

But we merge in secrecy,

Two seas

One,

In the nights.

Under cover of whispering stars,

Who never tell

Of what we've done.

-

Laced with sleep

And calm

We lie, a mangled mess

Of limbs, in a bed

Somewhere far,

With windows thrown open.

-Like our arms, in embrace-

To the chilly winds that check in

On the sleeping forms,

Of us two birds,

Flight in the sunlit hours,

Now nesting in the dark.

-

Indiglo reminder of hours

In the infant morn,

Rosy-fingered dawn

Coming 'round.

Putting a pink tinge

Upon your ghostly pale

Face, coloring the hollows of your cheek,

While your breath joins the westward winds.

-

I cannot keep you,

Bird-one,

Our sails, victim to wayward morning winds,

When the city awakens,

And we part,

Tearing into two forms

Again.

-

By day you fly,

I cannot keep you,

Pinned to sun-aged bedclothes,

Of a morning lullaby,

My bird who sings

Only in the night.