Gerry Boyd

the rapture never comes too late

the seductive regret of scarlet lipstick late applied

is easily erased by the chartreuse ferns of a feathery dawn

and a woody prayer of silver moss that is perfect in its worship:

when your flowered skirt is breathlessly lifted

over the variegated heaven of your musky thighs,

ah! there the firm blossom issues, and causes us to climb-

baptized so surely with a rainy spring of hidden desire,

this precious bulb so long buried, in a fashionable arcade,

by the distracting drifts of bleak chatter and snowy bores

has burst through the dam that was always too weak to hold it.

so ecstatic to take the waters, in the roaring way of alpine cures,

from the holy torrents, once reserved, for stark liturgical glaciers:

in the graying cloud of snow melt, an edelweiss has blossomed,

delicious, at the summit, in its white and dusky innocence.