Gerry Stewart

She stood nonchalant clothed like a dandelion before the fire.

She smiled lifting her chemise to warm her arse in the flames.

The mariachi trumpets fade with the red gored sun mellowing at dusk.

Children dart behind, scuffling in the dust, brown wrinkled skin like scabbards of lost dreams.

You sit in the dark a silhouette singing Spanish songs of lost love and pain.

I hear church bells in your voice, the lonely pang of night keeps you drifting

between dreams and sorrow, of lost opportunities, things unsaid, actions incomplete.

You lay beside me the music a distant breeze half remembered. Perhaps it's best this way.

She asked me to play something sweet and holy.

I took the quivering reed between my lips

and pressed greensleeves against her dress, the gold saxophone,

mother of pearl keys, her breasts rising falling in prayer.

I watch her body wet and dry her moods at dusk at dawn she sips lemon tea

lemon shampoos blonde hair lemon slice between glass and blue eyes, a goddess of love

night and day. Beautiful clothes shape silken breasts swaddle golden child

intelligent conversation in business in bed unmarried then wed unavailable but saleable

relationship with her one hour a day which is everything, or nothing, or love.

The spirit survives its changing form, like seeds sown in autumn anticipating the promise of flowers blooming in spring.

Or a chance wind sweeping starlings to flight, to grasp at life to flake the air like soot the ambiguity of then and now confused.

The present etches the surface like riddles scribbled in sand, the past burnished with pain illuminates the future.

Seeking solitude spirit transcends time and space, embracing life in all its forms the earth, the waves, the flames of the universe.

Stretching from your nipple to infinity, planets orbit the heavens.

Like a planetarium above the bed the skylight frames the reality of you lying naked, now and starlight hurling the past against walled shadows.

Searching sky's dark well we lie together waiting for the future.

Through Sumac's pointed fingers she watched orions belt flicker in the dark.

Reaching between fronds she felt her lover shudder as shooting stars tracked across the sky.

Each time the moon is ripe I scoop blue water from the lake store it in preserve jars its magic pressed to my ear.

On nights like this I spill some in your whiskey smile at your eyes, bright moist lips, and think, This could be the night.

Later at dawn we watch the moon curl down the sky, the lake pull back from the shore.