CAPE JASMINE

1.

These lapped petals

repeat the scent

of morning, of earth, dew’s

milk-white fog

Scarab’s claws,

spittle of blue triangle butterfly

(as if from your body),

sweet liquors distilled of night,

mattress, pillow

A fragrance creeps

from the bed’s half-dreamt cliff

hesitant

light as a cat

Echoing memory, rich

and weighty (ah your palm)

opening toward me

2.

This eggshell porcelain

this shallow wineware

how can it hold the repeating fugue

about to overbrim

I await you

(I’ll stay if I say so)

Can you hear? How

uncertain, soon to shatter

3.

Like bunched clouds soon

to tear apart,

snow on the treetop

soon to melt

the sound dims

but still echoes,

that color (oh how it resembles white silk’s

fear of defilement)

It’s surely time to close

the moon halo’s twenty-one petals,

its twenty-one layers

lingering

Besieged city, I can’t after all

step from your open web,

its pale labyrinth

its turns