MINX

Having dispensed with the honorific
in two days flat, she supplanted a softened
first name to take the edge off the former.
Still, it wasn’t strictly his own: all too often
he’d weighed against that hated misnomer.
The bloody thing was not even chic.

His given of course was no less detested –
(his kind being happiest without one) –
buried, save for the odd wifely exhumation
now and then. So what was begun
as a gentle jibe at their age equation
(a lifetime separating luscious and grey-crested)

suddenly sprouted, grew a soul and throve
as love’s surprising spur. The doldrums stirred,
her sighs bussed a sail or two
to life, a tentative swell answered.
Supremely assured, knowing what she must do
she added wile to wind and drove

him out of his wits: she was out to kill.
While he, long becalmed in inert seas
was unused to storms. Taken pleasurably
aback he marvelled at the unwonted breeze,
before being swept aloft inexorably
in the typhoon, gale, blizzard, what you will.

***

The First Rain Saudade

First Rain Saudade

The first showers fall,
Syncopated percussions,
Like memory of first love.

It wets eyelids,
Brings out a drawn sibilant breath.
The rain paints sky with a gray brush,
Satiates the earth,
Slakes desire, like an absent lover’s kiss.

Slowly memory unravels,
Oh! How the nymphs came and went,
Spilling the air
With moist yearning.
Isn’t love
The desire of something one can’t have?

The upended trees, buildings,
Reflected in recent clouds,
And the skin erupting with goose bumps,
The wetness clinging,
As memory to soul:
A feeling of saudade.

She went away,
Forsaking love,
The memory lingers,
As first showers.
The smell of wet earth,
Brings back her musky spoor,
Wish she were here,
To hug and to hold.

The clouds make love to thunder,
The skies pour forth anguish,
It would be enough,
To know that somewhere in the world,
She is alive,
And watching a similar rain.

The first showers fall,
Syncopated percussions,
Like the memory of first love.

J

------------------------------

Saudade, according to wikipedia (http://wikipedia.com) is a Portuguese word for a feeling of longing for something that one is fond of, which is gone, but might return in a distant future. It often carries a fatalist tone and a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might really never return. (Thanks “?!” for introducing me to the word.)