Sestina

When you first appeared like the wing
beats of an unseen bird, I wavered.
On the balustrade above the sea, your lips
consumed me as you cast off my dress,
as I lay beneath your precious love, as the lindens
swayed that burning night. Everything on fire! Your hands

white with salt spilled over me in poetic frenzy. Your hands
wove gold and the song minstrels did raucously sing
with nine-hundred swallows in flight above the lindens,
and I laughed at the joy of it all. Yet, you wavered.
From the fragrant sheets I reached for my dress—
that day you’d returned from America with lips

a mélange of plums, apricots, pleasantness, lips
wanting a kiss as long as dawn. Beyond, on the sand,
waves purl sextillion blue mussels—we caress
to the hypnotic rhythms of the sea, the sea’s offering
of kelp and whelk. The morning sun never wavers
as a flicker thrums on the stone wall in the lindens,

as an east wind brings itinerant birds to budding lindens
under fading spokes of moonlight. My thirsty lips
unmoored—taste of the sea as I beg, “Don’t waver.”
You lace my coppered hair round your seaman’s hands
as the sky dims to dusk swift as a swallow’s wing.
I can’t laugh anymore at the pain of it all, unless

you stay—nothing less—unless
you promise. Walking in the lindens
by steep limestone cliffs sheathing
a crimson coast my bitten lips
leak tendrils of blood as a moon hands
over wave after wave. The moored ships waver

in harbour light. Don’t go, don’t waver.
Clamoring masts crash as if in distress.
The tide’s full. I entwine my hand
in yours. Spring time’s leafing lindens
chatter as if a child playing. Your ship’s
anchored in the harbour—waiting.

In the fragrant shade of the lindens, hand
in hand, we caressed and when you felt the wing
beat of my womb, your lips promised, “I won’t waver.”

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