"the other one"

“the other one”
A work in progress

She was the ghost of stimulation
when I first saw her pass my way;
a premonition, thrown
here by some divine command.
Her hair was a flame breaking loose;
her eyes like Thoreau’s meadows;
all else about her suggested
dewy mornings and late Spring days;
everything else was only dancing,
stopping for a drink
from a lonely, sparkling well.

I stepped closer to this graven icon,
this ghost of lilac song, and saw
her hands laid upon a table, white
and yet red; saw the clarity of virginal
solemnity; heard her voice saying only
“the other one.”

I turned my body, with pain, from her
and looked behind my back; and there,
alone and smiling, was a man in a black
tuxedo; at me he sent a glint of his shining
teeth and threw a single rose.

“No,” I said, to myself, and turned again
to the ghost who has haunted me so,
and I saw her eyes as they looked past me
and could not defend myself against
the fire of her hair.

Behind this ghost, this woman, I walked
and kissed her once upon the neck. From
there I pulled her gentle hair into a braid,
and wrapped it tight
once,
twice,
three times
around her neck.