The Romantic As A Raspberry

photo by N.V.

If he could
he would tell her how highways at night are like roses—
white roses facing east and red roses facing west.

He might move on to a metaphor–
about how her face is a page he’s been longing to turn,
or her gaze a blanket too beautiful
to count stars under (that is his way).
And when things got slow, he could
lift her up with something strange, or sweet–
like did she know that the cappuccino
she is sipping slowly under the awning
gets its name from the hooded frocks of the Franciscan friars?
(Those were a similar shade of brown
as the drink, and the deep dark of her eyes.)

Where others shut themselves, he opens;
he is like newly-bottled wine,
a coastal Pinot Noir, with a hint of raspberry lingering
in the aftertaste of simmered citrus–
too young, too sweet
for this year.
He will spend his nights in quiet rooms,
bent over clicking ice to print fresh rings over old poetry,
wishing, in the words of Ira Gershwin
or Lorenz Hart,
that his romance didn’t need a thing to start
but her and conversation over coffee.

I am not like this.
I think of ordinary things, like chocolate labs and laundry on a Thursday.
I have never read Keats or Wordsworth
or Joyce’s Portrait;
I will not write you sonnets
or sketch your silhouette on an evening train.
And when you laugh and say,
“You know so many words!”
I will not tell you it’s because you are a butterfly;
(it makes no sense, you won’t get it)
even though I see how with each time
your name cascades down my throat
it melts me, like the syllables in far-fal-la–
(which is Italian for butterfly,
and the most beautiful word I know).

No, love is a simple thing,
as commonplace as socks or bad weather.
It is the blueprint
of a house before that is even built,
where nothing can be lost in its dark corners
or laced beneath the wings of its patterned wallpaper;
(after all I should not wish to misplace myself
in the mere impossibility of you).

So, I got you some highways. Care for a monk?

(July 16, 2008)

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