Tethered

Tethered, indiscrete, fawning, a soft sigh
Moored, undulating, the sea’s abandon quelled…
A hand gloved in a spray of salt
Sullies not your flesh
I brush the pallid cheek
So frail
A trembling face many thousands
Of years old and still
We touch
To brush away longing
Wiped away
Threads of desire like unkempt servants, paler slaves born
Of illusion nourishing cries from the master
Of illusion and shadowy silken songs draped
To smolder funeral pyres—
Soften the landing of a child
Whose name, finger burning black
Traces thick smeared ash, guards,
Whispering, speaks to the passing fire…

Isn’t the gray smoke burning the sky from idiot fires
Down far below cupped in this pitched and pocked hand
More breathless than any weary sigh
Poor and naked of aim, belittling trust in fellow man,
Eyes soft of wonder, thrusting an easy welcome
Enough?
I have nothing to offer any of this
Anyone, even you—
I imagine the idiots dancing, spellbound,
A spectacle of hot love in the jungle night
Denuded, burned…
Embers rising bloom as stars
Guiding me overland night into night
Dawn receding like the fire below
I smell burning and crackling, ashes and ink.