In Salt and Other Parts

This night fell double moons at
distant ice and cleft
silhouette crags clawing into stardom
jagged teeth cirrus breath
a crooked puzzle saws constellations in half
sailors sing twilit ballads in titian catacombs
wrestling winds in cast net
triple thread and sailing cloth
whistling with sun shard lips
tilted tunes of the byways between sun
and cloud

she was in parts jasmine
sweltry spice from a far-flung place
fragrance of a wet world
her running lines smooth jacketed
hull of curvature and soft rhyme
pliable folds of incandescent poetry
where writ in daydreams
that silent menace
golden tardingale thief who cannot
sing, and cannot love

and knows not
what it means to tremble
across her holy flesh.

TA