Almost Twenty
Three Years


i have
nine lives, and an insatiable taste
for living on the edge;
beckoned. it comes to me
a spotted dream, and likens me
to those beneath: dissolute.
i chastise them--my hollow hands--
and sew the linings shut.
the village then, who mock condemned,
tilt their glasses up:
fey, cognizant--firefly!
village of the virile, pitchforks high!
they come to me in the night!
you love him then, and follow him--
his linings make amends;
the spots remain, well-contained
in the circular sphere of the dawn
that rising tide, justly abides,
and insists on her frock unhinged.

if you saw it, love, you saw it--
and if i loved it, then it was real.
the village contains, well-maintained,
that lofty, loveless dream;
lovingly.