the most interesting woman in town, a valentine

1.

you borrow from burkard:
the most interesting woman in town
walks slower than the spider.
you don't speak
yet i would speak with you

still

we learn to love
the spider
and her slow walk
to love
the slow walking spider
to love
we are taught.

conversely
we needn't be taught
how loathsome are
the spider's prey;
for their slaughter
for their slaughteress
we give praise.

at my own peril i treasure more
the acquired appreciation
than instinct's imperatives,
fine scotch over chocolate
love over lust.

but you are
neither spider nor prey
nor are you a cat
as you might have it
and as i have said
(in pique but not unkindly)

-- neither
treed nor treeing,
slashing nor crying.

you are too
disembodied
for a cat
whose quintessence
whose catessence
is sheer embodiment,
habitation without remorse
without apology.

(you are neither
problem nor solution.)

you are seraphic,
many-wing'd;
your lofty vantage
(where you mistake
the cold breeze coiling
about your naked ankles
for the onrush of
a spring tide to drown in)
confounds your
terrestrial defiance,
yet there too
you find shadows
to hide your fear.

for me no metaphor
of my own devising:
my imminent me-ness
confounds auto-figuration.

but i needn't live as metaphor
to live by metaphor
or to hold a bird in hand
is a bird in hand is
a bird in hand is no
bird at all.

2.

i squint against
the air you churn
in fluttering consternation
before my fool's grin
marshaling conviction
before darting heavenward

one down-wan feather
twirling to rest on my lip
like an eyelash
that tastes of you:

grenache and syrah
cigarettes and coffee
hello and good-bye . . .