The Doe-Eyed Girl With Late August Skin

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Time is the quotidian commute of the sun,

the month-long striptease of the moon,

the lazy hammock sway 

of a metronome

that sits like 

the Buddha

high atop the lace-covered 

Mountain top

of a Baby Grand

in a splash of sunlight

where specks of dust

whirl like dervishes.


Time is the only thing we want

when we’re in love.

And the one thing we cannot bear

When we lie awake

on the observation deck

of our nighttime bed,

counting the pink dahlias

in the shadows

of the wallpapered meadow 

that what won’t 

let 

go.

Time, in the daylight hours,

is my closest friend—

the only one who can take me back

to anywhere

but here,

to the threshold moment of 1970,

when the doe-eyed girl

with late August skin

answered the door,

sopping wet hair,

a shirt barely snapped,

a Hula dancer’s smile

whose beauty hit—

point-blank,

and I was gone

falling 

backward

like Capa’s fallen soldier.


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