Thirteen Stanzas in Search of a Simile

He is like a book so full
of such ephemeral translucent leaves –
which breathe their essence

up as soon as glanced at – that involuntarily
you must release your hold upon the spine –
as soon as it endears its story

to your warm unwary ears: and all its melody
retreats to memory: unhooks
from time: a souvenir, a taste as fat –

voluptuous – as cream; as subtly evanescent
as a dream: and yes, he’s like a book –
a narrative which glimmers

out to you bare outlines of the plot
of how you walk into his spot-lit presence
and are mowed down: must recuperate

right after you steal looks at him:
a flimsy sheaf of notes
whose Sapphic shards cannot begin

to promise anything remotely like completion:
an amassing in a single fragile volume
of the barest frazzled edges

of voluminousness – of his luminous arrivals
and departures, all of them too quick to stick.
Maybe he is like a book – or

maybe he is like the round small plastic open
white container of a blob of honey
you once watched flame into fire, dull back

into mud and flame to fire again when
shafts of sun found ways to pierce the waning
winter clouded air to spark into an unimaginable

glory – there – right on your table,
next to an undrunk hot pot of tea.
Maybe he is like a dab of molten honey, maybe

he is like a fairy book: maybe he is like
a sort of sea you conjure up unluckily
to dive into whenever you can’t stand

the hunger for the sort of thing
he seems to be – unassimilatable into
the blurring erring limits of a simile.


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