For S.L.
I
Riding the stationary bike, I spy
A comely woman on the treadmill—slim,
Of a certain age. Well endowed, yet trim,
Strangely named—Is it Heaven? Dawn? No, Skye!
Once, I tried (hoping for notice no doubt)
A compliment, ”Skye, you’re getting too thin!”
“What! Too thin! If your cock was in my mouth
You’d pull it out because I was too thin?”
This with slit eyes and barely suppressed grin.
Words—my breath, my life’s sustenance—lay slain.
Flushed, overthrown, I mumbled some inane
Response: “Probably not, your not that thin.”
But Skye, as usual, had won the field.
She’s in the game, both managerial
And otherwise, I hear. Ethereal
Women attend her seminars and yield
Themselves to her insight into pleasure—
Buy devices, learn those sensual arts.
She was a big time stripper once, broke hearts—
Knew how sex both shaped and weighed our measure.
II
But that’s not all—there’s more to life than bed.
She understands our other appetites,
And ministers to them as well. The night,
Perhaps, allures, but daytime must be fed.
And so she feeds us all with home-cooked stew.
With cakes and candies, cunningly creates
And sates still other passions, shrewdly mates
Mouths, stomachs, groins in one tart-flavored brew—
Hits the gym (aromatic pots in hand)
With a wicked smile or a ribald gibe,
A rich and fecund cornucopia—
Awakened from a new apostle’s trance.1
A dawning heaven, after all, our Skye;
Our mother goddess; our utopia.
(1/20/07)
1 See The Acts of the Apostles, 10:10-16. “He [Peter] became hungry and desired something to eat; but while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance and saw the heaven opened, and something descended, like a great sheet, let down by four corners upon the earth. In it were all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air. And there came a voice to him, ‘Rise Peter; kill and eat.’ But Peter said, ‘No Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.’ And the voice came to him again a second time, ‘What God has cleansed, you must not call common.’ This happened three times; and the thing was taken up at once to heaven.”