"I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz or arrow of carnations that propagate fire" -Pablo Nerdua

He used to give her carnations for the trace of taste that word used to leave on his tongue. He didn't kiss her even though he wanted to, and she wanted him too, her mouth carnation red.

It is only later, on discovering Latin for flesh is carnatio, he understood the theology of desire is as light as the fire of carnations, and as knotty as her petals waiting to open for love.

[1] The frank erotic nature of trees surprises me every autumn. This infinite incandescent laying of their mouths over an earth growing cold. This is how I would like to kiss you, if only I could, as you roil in bed these mornings with cold feet.

[2] I have loved women for their eyes.

E, many years ago, for her lime-green like those Parisian avenues with plane trees, of which she spoke often. She was French.

Then there was N with her blue of distances, and who orbited closest to me only by lakes and bays. Strange for she was from the landlocked Great Plains.

There was also B, her African night depths and their sudden wild flaring. She had some conquistador in her. And we fought with the same ferocity, slashing glares.

I speak this from under water, as your gaze ripples over me, opalescent and light, murmuring over my body's earth.

In which he sees her radiant in red-bronze at the end of long hallway - no, not "sees", but hears her laugh over

the steady silence of the assembled spirits, a lighthouse's roving spear which tows and pulls him shorewards even in his sleep's dark,

towards her bare shoulders to place his palms

• which haven't touched a lyre in years - upon, as if he were snatching the oars from Charon's grip.