Versions Of Heaven

In a Lilith Fair version of Heaven,
I met a clover-honey molasses cookie kind of woman
whose skin was like a Spanish shore,
and so I
shipwrecked up against her; softly as a cat.

"Look at you," she said,
"A real foam and lace wave of a woman.
Where's your half shell?"
Oh, her smile,
arch and sweet as a peach.

Now listen, I know
that I am a tyger, a big striped stinky star
with golden eyes 
and toes that end in sharp detail.
I lay on my side in the sand, hoping she would take my teeth for starfish arms.

In a fresh-sheet bed and skylight version of Heaven,
this woman and I, we touched caramel, lavished cream,
saved pink for last, and when we slept, it was in a cradle of waves.
How hammock-easy were my dreams.
How contented were my cat-sounds in the jewelry box of her arms.

In the morning she said, "Tyger mine and Tyger sweet,
did She who made the Lamb make thee?"
She laughed and offered me an orange section, 
then went out to the veranda.
Oh, imagine my surprise to find
my claws and stripes turned back the way they used to be,

so I spread them wide, my shoulder-wings
wet from the surf and drying now 
in the spilled divinity of early light.
_____

for Turning Pink at Real Toads.