A Russian Love Story

I brought you a garden where Winter had hidden--

It came drawn by two draft horses, strong and dumb,

Like the Cossack hearts I had made them from.



The Siberian ice pleased you, breaking beneath your sable boots--

Little frozen birds from the afterworld

Arrived to adorn your fingers like feathered burls.



If I had just one wish,

It would be to lie beside you like moving water--

I want to tear myself continuously on the edges of your ice.

Sick of loving dull round stones,

I want your sharpness--

Over millennia, I want to be dissolved entirely

By your face,

Your eyes,

Your voice.



I brought a garden where winter had hidden,

To your frost-sheathed doors, shut against the Spring--

Concealed within was the canny vixen,

As silent as snow, as soft as linen.

________

for One Shot Wednesday 

Michigan Love Story

You are cold, I said,

But so beautiful that the darkness hovers near you with all of her stars--

Returning always, helpless with desire.



I am a rocky shore, you said.

Receive me, moon-drawn and rhythmic like a pulse--

I will turn your certainties to sand.



If I am a rocky shore, I said,

Then I offer you surrender smooth as an angel's thigh--

Marbled with devotion and hopelessness.



Come, you said, kiss me for the high,

A little less each time--

Until, finally, I close over you and take you into my blue, barely-beating depths

To be un-born,

Forever,

As my lover.

__________

for One Shot Wednesday