Karl Kirchwey
Rapture
Wetting a forefinger, the winter breeze
turns the pages of a sodden magazine
abandoned on a bench. Like a scarf from a purse,
one woman opens another and draws her on.A hawk sits in the top of a tree nearby,
with huge pale yellow eyes, turning its head,
then pushes off. The branch swings convulsively,
freed of that weight, its chunky buteo glide.One morning I found the wings of a white dove
intact on the pavement with nothing in between,
just the bloody tendons of consuming love,
the body shed at last, and imaginationhaving succeeded in taking flight somewhere.
After a while their positions have changed.
One woman is licking the fingers of another,
and neither is wearing a scarf. The breeze has arrangedall this in the intervals of pale sunlight.
What occupies that flightless space naturally?
A gaze, unblinking in the melting quiet,
Such are the prompts of appetite in February.