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ISSN
1942-2067
Copyright © 2009 Pirene's Fountain.
TX7-018-906
All Rights Reserved.
Last updated:
April 2010 |
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Chris Elder is a lifelong autodidact in the power of words, beginning from his earliest memories of being teased for using words numbering greater in letters than years in his age, to his latter influences in an eclectic blend of Mark Helprin, Jack Gilbert, John Updike, Emily Dickinson, William Faulkner, Jackson Browne, Peter Matthiessen, and especially Eleanor Wilner.
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Desire
Fully-dressed, you walk along the edge of the pool,
feeling the draw of disaster – ruined shoes, soaked wallet,
short-circuited cell phone – yet you skirt the brim
just to see the girl up close. The curves and the margins
draw you in – cheekbones, eyelids, breasts, corners
of her mouth – and her gravity pulls you to the brink.
Longing is too weak a word to convey the clutching
in the back of your throat, a grip that radiates down
through your corporeal core, destabilizing
your knees, endangering not only
the integrity of your possessions,
but the very stability of your soul.
Beauty comes in myriad forms,
and if you see it in the girl, you can see it
in the delicate flower, the fine
feather, the split rock, the tickle
of words conveying truth – it
inundates every molecule of
your being. No, you will not publicly
baptize yourself in humility, nor
taste the cherry dangling just
out of reach. Simply behold –
your spirit soaking in the wonder
of your parched restraint. |
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