She asked could I validate her stone,
a nocturnal perspective

I told her I would,
“I would,” she echoed

Ballast is a thing
to discard, baggage on the trek

A one-track trick
she’d endeavor to remember
when hearts held fast in amber
ere embers

“All too many.”

She said,
“…it’s a crime to rhyme.”

“Maybe,” I pondered
“Maybe next time?” she lilted
quizzingly lyrical

I roll her around
in my mind, my mouth
my blood a roil

Viscera expands
to engulf the whole plain

“I’m thirsty. You thirsty?” she asks
and pours cool water from a blue clay ewer

She sees I am confused by
the sudden appearance of sky and wind

“You knew all along!”
“Wrong. Not all along.”

Well, just recently then
I succumb to her engulf

Swept windblown in dramatic arc
stretching tendon to body

En pointe
and flex

She and I are all the world
after all

Chagall 2018