Summer’s Admonition

Sometimes everything inside sighs, whisper-like.

Sometimes something makes you feel complete.

And you don't need laughter or holding

hands. You have all you need,

sometimes, somewhere inside.

It's in your reflection as you clean the windows,

languid springtime sun flitting filtered through.

The image becomes clearer as you scratch the surface.

The world and, superimposed over it, the faintest you.

Sometimes, in distilled light, if you look close enough

and your skin has chocolate reds in it,

you can see rainbows in the pores of your cheek,

hiding under delicate eaves of eyelashes.

And even though the rainbows can be explained away

by photons and light refraction,

it doesn't make them any less special.

It's the way you feel walking in sunshine.

Not sweltering summer sun that makes you sweat sexy,

for those walks- on the beach or, if you're lucky, on hot city pavement

are meant for the eyes of others, all the men

who have nothing to do and no choice but to adore you.

You are directing your own pornography, softly hiding it

in the loping hips and the swishing thighs.

"Girls! Girls! Girls!" the men sigh,

leaning against the nearest object at the height of their swoon.

If you're unlucky and your skin is chocolate red,

sometimes they lean on a jealous girl.

Her eyes follow you too, spewing venom on your well-turned heels.

But you just keep walking through her hateful puddles,

stopping traffic and, at times, business as usual.

"Girls! Girls! Girls!" you say in your shimmying ass.

No, the walks that are for you are in spring,

where you embody the feminine.

You make the wind gasp, bend the trees.

And when you sit, all the leaves want to cast patterns on your face.

Sometimes, if you sit in the grass or a snazzy outdoor café,

you eat and drink your fill, making poetry with your spoon.

When you finish, satiated, the floral print of your dress

tightens just slightly at your waist. You do not cover it

with your white cloth napkin. You are not ashamed.

You simply sit straighter and stroke the fabric with a clandestine hand.

You are beautiful as Buddha;

you are an icon cast in the most wildly unrealistic browns and reds.

And sometimes you are completely at peace.

These times are not few and far between

if you take time to know

that you are the most perfect imperfection.

But if you are ignorant, you will pass each day in cowardice,

waiting for happiness to approach. You will be a scarecrow

(instead of being beautiful and lucky), hung in a field

in the middle of nowhere, watching the world unfold

around you like unstarched sheets.

And you will stay there, hanged and crucified,

ignorant and full of nothing important,

scaring things away for the rest of your life.

You mustn't miss the springtime sweetie, nor let it miss you.

You are much too delicious for that.