Spent the evening
in the restaurant, surreptitiously looking
at distant women between the heads of men
Games ensued
when I caught some
looking at me
The eyes are important
in the connections of us
I flicked mine: this
and that way:
tipsy slur in the way I threw the eyes
and the women I was playing with,
like I, playing and talking and playing
the people we were talking to had no clue;
the waitrons waited, the chefs never waiting;
no one had a clue.
Suddenly came a wave,
once silent in the sea of feeling,
and took energy
from every current before its time
then in one great sweep
swooped me and the sand of my spirit,
shaken like a potent drink,
to quake and proclaim to myself:
There are so many women in the world
much more than men
for so much beauty
how can one ever be committed to only one?
Always too* patient
I am then they are gone
to live again in my thoughts
resurrected as regret;
I pay for these evenings:
with unquenchable eyes,
with the big-chested wave collapsing into foam,
with the promise of love -
with myself.
This is what life is
to those who wait too* long:
all one ever kissed were eyes
while the ocean erupts
within the chalice of vulnerability
one's lips tremble from a safe distance;
but love never was the dying wave at one's feet.
