Foreplay By Pattiann Rogers

267 Words2 Pages
Foreplay When it first begins, as you might expect, the lips and thin folds are closed, the pouting layers pressed, lapped lightly, almost languidly, against one another in a sealed bud. 5 However, with certain prolonged and random strokings of care along each binding line, with soft intrusions traced beneath each pursed gathering edge, with inquiring 10 intensities of gesture—as the sun swinging slowly from winter back 12 to spring, touches briefly, between moments of moon and masking clouds, certain stunning points 15 and inner nubs of earth—so with such ministrations, a slight swelling, a quiver of reaching, a tendency toward space, might be noticed to commence. 20 Then with dampness from the dark, with moisture from the falling night of morning, from hidden places within the hills, each seal begins to loosen, each recalcitrant clasp 25 sinks away into itself, and every tucked grasp, every silk tack willingly relents, releases, gives way, proclaims a turning, declares a revolution, assumes, in plain sight, a surging position 30 that offers, an audacious offering that beseeches, every petal parted wide. Remember the spiraling, blue valerian, remember the violet, sucking larkspur, the laurel and rosebay 35 and pea cockle flung backwards, remember the fragrant, funneling lily, the lifted honeysuckle, the sweet, open pucker of the ground ivy blossom? Now even the darkest crease possessed, 40 the most guarded, pulsing, least drop of pearl bead, moon grain trembling deep within is fully revealed, fully exposed to any penetrating wind or shaking fur or mad hunger or searing, plunging surprise 45 the wild descending sky delirium has to

More about Foreplay By Pattiann Rogers

Open Document