Nymph, Sylph, Mirror-glass

The water suspends,
As warm as a womb,
It whispers currents,
From the bloom of my own
Languor.

The air, she lays the steam
So soft and slow against the mirror-glass,
So soft and slow like mother lays
Her child in the bassinet.

Then, unburdened,
And left fresh-skirted and alive with chill,
She kisses me in the lover's nook -
The crook of the neck.

Her tease is tender:
She is right.
Its time that I got up.

My eyes wander to the mirror,
But the steam lays across,
So I, still and humid,
Am a ghost-in-the-glass.

Too tall, perhaps?
Yes, that.
The spectre, it is foreign --

But perhaps a strange and elder sister of myself
Looks back through a glass darkly.
And when I nod to her,
She nods back.

Cold, heartfelt, compassionate.

And this gentility,
Perhaps,
It is enough.

(image courtesy of nutmeg designs)

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Showers

I stand beneath the angry steam,
Unhinged from all my armors.
As empty as a scoured kettle.
As solemn as a clapperless bell.

My hands, my rough, hairy-knuckled hands:
How could I have expected more?
You darling monsters,
You have done all that you could.
My face, a pimple stuck with crusted ooze,
Oh, face,
You were the best that you could manage.

Imperfection is a spectrum,
I have learned.

All things possess their faults,
They say - this is not quite true.
Some of us, weak specimens,
Are rather by our faults possessed.
The ghost of error tickling up our spine
Directing us,
Benevolently sure that it knows best.

The water runs,
Spittle from old pipes of verdigris.
The water runs and licks the dust and tatters,
Leaves behind, insoluble,
The sticky grease of sin.

(Image by Jerry Bowley)

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