Stay in this light, but let me see you faced
Away, a burnished copper goblet pressed
Against the gauzy sky, the pale blue laced
With apricot. And though I seem obsessed
With shape, I mean to underscore my haste
To understand the grandeur of your breast,
Whose glories go on glowing in the taste
Of what my lips, like fingertips, caressed
With syllables, my hands about your waist,
Describing you, deliciously undressed.

My terra cotta friend, you dive as deep
As mind can fathom. How am I to choose
Between the boredom of a dreamless sleep
And a chance to dance holes in my shoes?
Now we must take our places with the sheep,
The puzzled ones who fail to spot the clues.
Let's lay our heads upon our hearts, and weep
The fates, and curse the tides, and sing the blues,
And rave, and crowd in line at Lover's Leap.
Or better, set another date, and make adieux.

I like the sound of “terra cotta friend,”
Evocative of Earth. True friends are those
Who stand like rocks behind you to the end,
Who cling like mussels in the ebbs and flows
Of incident and circumstance, who bend
Like sea anemones. A lover grows
By magic, sprouting like a dividend,
A split, a crocus poking through the snows.
I shun the stock clichés of cattle penned
in lots, their empty eyes and bovine lows.

You are the driver off of all my fears,
The fan who never tires or loses zeal,
The floor stick I grab hold of, shifting gears,
The squirrel knob I use to spin the wheel
When cornering, to see how sweet it steers,
The leather seat I test for fit and feel,
A classic waxed with passion over years,
A cherry on the used car lot, a steal.
You grace my hood, an ornament with ears.
My nighttime road conditions bide ideal.

We lilt like Benedict and Beatrice
In Berlioz's singing valentine,
Rekindling Shakespeare's myth of married bliss
With varied tweaks and twists: The monkeyshine,
The pressure to approach the precipice,
Devotion to a fault, a taste for wine.

Before our winged epistles fly amiss,
Let's pop champagne and warble Auld Lang Syne.
Farewell for now, with this, my parting kiss.
Tomorrow night, same time, same place, online.