Awaiting the Orchids

I can tell you what it’s like down here, I’m not the first,
and I will tell you in time, when the orchids bloom again,
I don’t know why I must wait so long between the flowers:
When I take his little stem and let it blossom in quick time,
he purls his breath against my nakedness and it’s his own
I fold between my folding skins, I am like a long life’s love
he could never know if I had insisted on staying home
with its reassuring silences, memories, caresses
of a body with body, mine, and who knows, it can’t matter
whose the other is, I have only the climb up, the climb down
to complete and the light that went out will come on again
as I sashay from bed to city and back to bed, but no,
I’m not home, I’m in the deeps of a city with no laws,
I can tell you its streets empty when I dare to come down here.

(21 December 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander