Aubade to Marit, Never Played

 I.        

Now let us go to contemplate that hill

Where flowers spring from seeds, intent to show

Unfastened bits to daybreak’s primrose glow

Like tumblers hurled up by one boy’s thrill

At making sky go dark and rooftop still

From burst of liberated doves who know

That boys stay stuck, while they are free to go.

Yet doves return; they lack a young boy’s will.

Night prods, commands her new moon to retire,

Pulls back an opaque curtain as I think

Of how we might employ dawn’s feathered fire

To draw you tickled out and to the brink

And there, with pink unfurled, probe your desire.

Yet you demur; and so, like thoughts, we sink.

                    II.        

We have, with fingers fixed on abacus,

Found too few days to let them pass in haste.

So rather than stay consummately chaste,

Let’s tinker with the private parts of us.

First, from the firmament magnanimous

I’ll steal a string of stars to gird your waist.

Should firmament demand they be replaced,

We’ll chuck the chore to cuckold Calculus.

But in the meantime, once more to that hill –

to ride your string of stars like carousel

From dawn to dusk and only there to dare

To ask aloud how we might then fulfill

Our task if we have merely stars to sell

When we find paradise.  Or do you care?

                III.        

Now think about this hill as paradise –

Upon it, and like giddy antelope,

Sure-footed, love takes hearts to highest slope

Where even knavish prudence may suffice

To gainsay quick elopement – lust’s device.

Once there, I’ll show how Cupid through twin scope

With steady aim at boastful thing called hope,

Would shoot to stick our vows not once, but twice.

There too, we’ll finally strip that robe that hides

And chides your flesh to keep itself discreet,

Remote, and from my own, quite separate.

Then I, with dawn – which over hilltop rides –  

Will slide upon you like a silken sheet,

Yet for the artful task, stay temperate.

                       IV.        

First stretching, old man sun climbs up from hill,

To prod his infant dawn to faster pace

Lest through equivocation, we lose place

And settle for some vagabond’s cheap swill.

So let me ask what love will drive you still

When ice-bound nights through howling winds give chase

To lovers’ lyre and summer’s last embrace

Since now – with lust denied – I sense a chill.

Real love, you claim, works best by standing toe

To toe with neighbors over crusty fence

When snow lies still or crickets strut their stuff.

While lust, you say, would in its frenzied flow

Play fast like gypsy jazz, spare no expense,

But then, just lounge about when times get tough.

                     V.        

Dawn springs up on her heels, though barely born,

Sends sullen, swollen glowworms home to bed,

Rebukes their frantic gluttony, now fed.

About to leave, night looks with mother’s scorn

Upon this child of sun and lover, morn –

A bastard kid, who has with antics bled

Quick fireflies of light and left instead

Night bald, and of her stars, completely shorn.

Then sun, at last, remarks your odd restraint

And sends to moon a condescending frown,

Which she reflects with patient, silver grace.

Both sun and moon repeat their just complaint

And from departing clouds, receive their crown,

Then, in the end, take back their private place.