DESIRE

It's an amazing thing, another
soul's desire, how the heart can form
around it and root, how new growth
sprouts and blooms in long green tendrils
like young tongues snaking their way
into every tiny crack, how they seek
the light, soften the dry and brittle

organs of a body. It's an amazing thing
how the absence of desire feels like a death,
how grief rides the soul with spurs, how
it brings the green things to black and withered
silence, how when you sleep beside me without
longing while my own heat bleeds and sweats
from every shaft of hair, how I still pray.

© Joan Barton, 1998

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