Monika Lee

Brescia University College, London, Ontario

Eclipsed

When my soul fell
like dew on a furrow
you didn’t feel it
soft tumbling at your feet.
When I hovered
insect-like near your lamp,
you didn’t bother
to singe my wings –
Did you even notice me humming?
Why should I love,
if you refuse to love,
except when the sky is blackest with
a penumbral skeleton, the moon eclipsed.
How can I when you race ahead,
along the loose shale and weeds
of those rough drafts
I wrote for you.
I cannot love you if you will not burn
or singe my wings a little.
My wish was a bleating ewe
in the large pen of your lovers.
Your aroma hovered near, and
one day your hand pressed mine
so close it entered dream
and fed my hunger.

I liked dancing for him

and only for him,
to Scarlatti and the English Beat –
it hardly matters which, though I was no
Zakharova. Still,
I taught my limbs
to float and shimmer
as though love-making
beside the green loon
among the fireflies in July,
though lovemaking is
nothing more or less
than an approximation of
dancing
to unheard melody
constellated by rhythmic breath,
taut legs, and arms silken
with tender abandon.

Poetics

A sudden flourish
then deft release
suits the preposterous
syllabic digression of a poem:
the tripping, traipsing
unwelcome foray into the heart.
certainly an escape
if not subterfuge;
an egret swooping down on prey,
the naïve susceptible mind;
a tambour sounding
for the derelict
and dispossessed.
In praise of the
uselessness of verse,
I wax theoretical.
The used tend to use,
while rosebuds bloom
and bodies slacken,
under the drenching rain.