Choice Virtues
After Roethke
Her voice revealed an A440 tone
that played upon the eardrum’s finest bone;
she’d tune the truest fork.
When laughing, subtle lines beside her eyes
bespoke a happy age—and oh, her thighs
were of the goddess sort.
Old T-shirts would suffice for when in clothes;
her every hint of honey crossed my nose
just like a waiter’s cork.
She trembled there. A tension in her frame
would peak, then fall in grace. She sang my name
in whispers’ sweeter chords.
She was the gymnast; I, prone I, the mat,
caught trodden underfoot in capers that
she blithely would abort.
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