Face

Late November London blossoms:
roses – blowsy, falling, fallen;
pansies – brazen and surreal –
frozen-grins on mad-dog purple
Pekinese: amid all these and in this

northern light and in this cloud-
exhuming and -exuding vacillating
bright/dim bluster of a place emerges
an amalgam face: divided man –
half-fluid, -monolithic – rooting up

from rock and sea – erupts into
the loins and groin and crack
of his strong self-supplying mystery:
he is the London night: spreads
ruthlessly – alchemically fecund –

flowering in winter. I seek the deep
beat of his pulse: and trust that I might
find a way to catch, convey a bit of it –
a little – fractionally – here. A strange
magnificence is always near.

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