O that girl, only young men dare to look at her directly while I manage the most sidelong of glances: olive-skinned with a Modigliani throat, lustrous obsidian hair, the narrowest of waists and high French bottom, ample breasts she tries to hide in a loose blouse. Though Latino her profile is from a Babylonian frieze and when she walks her small white dog with brown spots she fairly floats along, looking neither left nor right, meeting no one's glance as if beauty was a curse. In the grocery store when I drew close her scent was jacaranda, the tropical flower that makes no excuses. This geezer's heart swells stupidly to the dampish promise. I walk too often in the cold shadow of the mountain wall up the arroyo behind the house. Empty pages are dry ice, numbing the hands and heart. If I weep I do so in the shower so that no one, not even I, can tell. To see her is to feel time's cold machete against my grizzled neck, puzzled that again beauty has found her home in threat. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO DIANEME (1) by ROBERT HERRICK THE WORLD: A CHILD'S SONG by WILLIAM BRIGHTY RANDS A DIRGE by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI ASTROPHEL AND STELLA: 64 by PHILIP SIDNEY HELEN AND THETIS by ALCAEUS OF MYTILENE SONG, FR. THE LOVER'S PROGRESS by FRANCIS BEAUMONT |