Beneath the East Eaves

Beneath the East Eaves

                            Love,

little pilot flame, flickering,

    listen: I've been no one

        so many times I'm not the least afraid.

                                Mark Doty

                                "Nocturne in Black and Gold"

Raised, at first it's just a little fist

of skin above my wrist, inflamed from

participating in staging the climbing 

ivy and one particular variety of rose

we hope is inclined to like the east

side of the trellis.  It was left, and the dying

morning glory vines stick it out

in the cracks and spaces in the frame.  These

couple three days of evading the raised 

red flesh...but this morning it's just enough 

to distract, to annoy, which is what

some bugs do, come and go in stealth

intelligence, numbing the nudge, under

the glove, to do its own work drawing out

a piece of you before bumbling along

drunk for their luck.  We don't

even remember the encounter most

times, a one-day stand if there are

such liaisons, wham bam

thank you ma'am and the fling

is complete.  Blink and it's done.  It's only

later, a day, maybe longer, we'll wash

that exact spot of penetration and thumb

the reddening, lick it with our tongue.

Some things last longer than the opening

and closing of a miniature sting, blink

or sleep.  Between the horizon and sweep

of last season's brief blooming lilies beneath 

the eaves of kitchen's hip roof, it's 

a deep enough hue of green most people

would never think is even green or 

something other than black. We pass

by daily and never raise an eye, never

let ourselves settle in the itch that's coming

just under the pinky, so pinched it looks

like the coming open of a rose

or like the eye of a wood duck

plotting the bog's tidal offal.   Maybe

such a mesmerizing eye occupies

us enough going by we're trying

to decide which is the day's wisest

catechism to attend to: petals coming

undone with the lift of the sun

or this simple itch in the thick

of our skin?  Lick each maybe? 

Put our teeth to it.  Lick them again

and again, to taste the way the day's

been made, some wash, some pollen,

some bug spray, and some, 

because blood was negotiated,

blood was drawn somehow, (but

blink it) of rust.