By rights one should experience holy dread <br />At the young woman gowned in black chiffon <br />Who, at a mirror, slightly turns her head, <br />Large eyes intent, and puts an earring on. <br />One should fear redwoods where the sun sinks shafts <br />Of glowing light through dust-revolving drafts <br />And where the cyclist slimly coasts through trees <br />As she leans forward, her arms long and brown, <br />And gives her brakes a moderating squeeze. <br /> <br />Yet the soul loves the braided rope of hair, <br />The sense of heat and light, the cheek's faint flush. <br />Time blurs; nights end; one climbs a narrow stair, <br />The studio's warm, the city is a hush <br />Of streetlamps and the snow that, all night, falls. <br />But later when one rises and recalls <br />How, in the dark, the spirit clings and melts, <br />It is as if the ardent, giddy rush <br />Had happened, somehow, to somebody else. <br /> <br />Gently to brush hair from the sleeping face, <br />To feel breath on the fingers, and to try <br />To check joy in that intimate, small place <br />Where joy's own joyousness can't satisfy— <br />This is pain. This is power that comes and goes. <br />This is as secret as the fresh clean snows <br />Which, destitute of traffic to confess, <br />Will serve at dawn as witness to a sky <br />Withdrawing to its high blue faultlessness.<br /><br />Timothy Steele<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/eros-2/
