To My Wife Joyce Standeford

My mind's a naturalistic blur; She is a hazy green image pressed up against the lens Our hands press against each other only separated by the glass; her body is in the shape of crucifixion tired arms sagging, feet clinched But she sprung from a garden once clothed in leaves and life; I will die with her, a green tree. My Joy, sweet, true, Greenish in petals, nature's favorite hue You've reached the hill-tops, and The sun's yellow flame Is now a streak of red, racing past us To the land of the dead And one day we will meet it there. Day unfolds Joy's velvet face; She yawns, stretches her Round slight jaw at the yellow sky. I die for her; she dies too. Her desire is for flesh foods; Her groans consume my logic; fire Clothes her nakedness, her womb She gasps for breath and wants To drink the sadness of men. My Joy, sweet, true, Your body's green, tears blue Body bowed, droplets of dew Do all but taste your sweetness And look how sorrowful you shine Spinning your petals To turn water into wine How proud you are of what only the sun Has done; I poke gently your stretched skin, Feel the strained tenuous echo Of strings I've played within Wrapped in your body I feel enraptured now as then. I die for her and she dies too. Her heat gasps with the warmth Of glowing coals within her, fiery; I quit my desire, strangle myself With my own bone, cut short To calm the bursting blood; red-faced, The strength within me starts to bud So I am young once more and willing To be dumb again in love. My Joy, sweet, tenuous, I once could play you soft and timorous Tears swashing green upon your skin Our morning dew did know no sin. But dusk falls rapidly upon us Skin once beautiful now onerous Wrinkles us in shame, still honor finds us In the dirges that remind me Of the life that's lost behind us. My Joy, sweet, tender, kind How proud and sorrowful you shine I must carry you within Buried bodies know no sin; You are beautiful and bright Burn your brightest here tonight And as dusk begins to call Let us here upon it fall Our closely sewn shadows touch silk, the cloth of our doom And the curtains of death do shroud us in eternity's womb. Don V Standeford