Explanation to come, for now, enjoy.
Sestina For No One
Though Neruda wrote to a different girl,
The line is true: I like you when you are silent.
Without words I can pretend we are more exotic,
From somewhere they still believe in magic.
As if you were an ornate lamp, an impulse
Purchase, a good deal, just the right color
For the room. Yours was not the color
of ephemera or dream, but that of a girl
I saw one day and on impulse
Set aside my tendency to stay silent.
It seems at times there is a magic
taking these plain lines to some exotic
Locale and flavoring them, these non-exotic
Words. Adding to this black ink the color,
A pastel maybe, or a jewel tone, of magic.
But I build us out of plain words: Girl
Boy, Kiss, and if we both stood silent
There would be no giving in, no impulse
To be swayed by, no ground for the impulse
To drive into. No matter the exotic
Fantasies, I would not have you stay silent.
I will take you in any color,
Even the gold of Midwest grains. Girl,
We should know enough of magic
By now to love the simple magic
Of the everyday, the mundane, the impulse
Just to be with one another, boy and girl.
Because the taste of a kiss is exotic
Enough. So I write about the color
Of your eyes, how you can’t stay silent
At the movie theater, how you stay silent
When I read these poems like it is a magic
Act: all tricks and distracting bits of color.
The mystery of the far away is a strong impulse
But all those lines of fantasy and exotic
Dreams pale when compared to you, girl.
I follow the impulse, and I like you when you are silent.
Yet every whisper is exotic, every play of color
Is magic. I do not like, but love, when you speak, girl.