the pluck of Pan

I wonder, sometimes, why I feel such draw
to be closer to you. Closer with every throb
of my heart, pounding in my ears, staging a thaw
in those cold corners I swore never to rob
of their well-earned silence, experience
having been a hard teacher and love is sweet
and bitter and complicated, a gentle dance
with violent intentions as I know I will meet
great pain on the road. Not that I do not
think you not worth a hard knock or a hundred,
for I can smell your skin from here, sweet and hot
and waiting for my touch and kiss, remembered
in memories of a future that I may not find
in this lifetime. Your gentle heart, perfect
to the shape of the wounds that life confined
to me in its own mock, dreamt of in lust and respect.
Not the respect of a saint, for I have dreamt
of carrying you away and laying with you, with fire
and a savage affection that would would preempt
any notion of a platonic thought, a feral desire
only made sense of inside you, feeling you surrender
to the pleasures of my hardened resolve, seeing you
as your eyes close in your own consummations, tender
and mad, your voice murmuring prayers made true
by your very presence in my heart, my arms, my bed
where I would curse the memory of every other woman
who has pretended to the heart on which you have fed
and found in me something worth the pluck of Pan,
giving over to the need to feed on a lover's breath,
his small death to bring you back to life as yours
awakens in him that which slept, having leapt
in foolish impatience, but now your touch cures.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.