D.F.

ALL UNCLOTHED

Unashamed and all unclothed I bathe in the tingling tears of sun-bright yearning to satiate desire

in your round full eye

until my nakedness is covered by the darkness in a pool whose chill smooth surface is, for a moment, ruffled before my love for love is drowned.

COMPENSATIONS

Some loves, like moths,

fly, blind, to love again

and singe their wings

on an indifferent flame.

Some loves burn

Alden Kirby

-before their blaze expires-

on wax, a wick, a wing:

their funeral pyres.

My love's signature

is not the blazing or the flying kind,

but the aftermath of smoke whose wisps

inscribe themselves

D.F.

an age or two-on my mind.

one

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