Classic Poem

for RBS

Is it a sound, thrush-gasp or throaty whimper, you keep wrapped in wax paper for midwinter nights, two hands and a vowel for company? Do longed-for fragments sing long enough to tilt wheel on axis, spill? Slipped strap, tippled glade, lace in fretwork, slow bloom of shoulder blade, clasps to unclasp, lamplight on hairsheen, orchids blooming at the wrists, gullies to swim in, the hour elongated, shivery, a smell to carry off on the thumb, peaty and overripe, but disappeared too soon, turned muzzy. Jutting into the hour like craving for marmalade, how thickened past touch the pastiche? An urgent, inclement burst of syrupy weather that drenches the doer in doing, a mellifluous, jagged syntax that when recalled will not be real, not even close? Will any ecstatic dust remain like cardamom between the fingers? Camerado , all I know is the cello in imagination makes music less sweet than hearing its body vibrate before us, clenched between knees, flayed by a bow, cradled at the base of the neck.