girls in lithe dresses
  still in photographs

they hurt like daggers—

being this young
  hurts like a dagger, too as
their eyes divine something
  in me,
or their hurtling way of being so
    ineffably in place
  and i, placeless,
  skin flushed hot
   like receiving a multitude of tongues,
    this juvenility,
   everything around me is lissomeness
     just— tryingly closing my eyes
hoping to be awakened by the roaring
     of blood in vein,
  put to sleep by a lapidary brush
    of hum: a delicate soft-petalled song
       but i am a child
   lost in a field
         of various flowers.