Aspen

Aspen

His heart with a hole won’t bleed.

More a bowl of a cave, it drops

Mold, yeast, bat turds, and moss

To up dust, as its dank campfire

Billows smolder from said cave

Mouth. How different his drama to

Pulse, flash, and faint -- full-hearted

In geysers of passion, their mineral

Foam jetting up steam aloft. Sanguine

With his one forever only Other, his

Face would drain pale at any hint of

His sharing their graces with another.

That fond Aspen summer he craved

To be asphodel to this lover, whose

Eponymous leaf, Aspen-lobed – his

Own scalloped – two shapes shim-

Mered as one, a-glint in volcanic

Indigo sun, their leaves breeze-

Trembled nervous to brassy. He

Hoped to quiver his shy heart into

His tent: sly gallant entwined as

Wind and clouds o’er-topped. Ever

Bawdy the clown, he’d strip himself

Down to jump and shriek into their

Alpine pond, its snow melt pert

With lime-stroked plants, bull reeds,

And flighty finches. His dashing

  Other stood astride the marsh bank

  Laughing full foolish, yet to him

That beau cracked up as thrilling intact

As Tyrone Power: that sexy sloped

And nipt nose, his heartfelt-shaped face,

And full flush of hair blowing round those

Bedroom brown eyes lined with lass-

Lashes. How grim now to reflect his

Heart, boll-dry and dead since then;

Not much for mere men; his beau’s rings

Of irises stilling to null, like pebbles long

Tossed in wind to that pond. How they’d

Come catered young for a wedding to pick

Wildflowers for her crown and bouquet;

How could he say,“I wish that were us?”

Admit being love-gay? To fan green love’s

Fall of leaves to rush to pond’s rushes. . . ?

MJM 9/76 S.B. – 12/31/10 SF