Widening Gyroscope

The songs coiled and multiplied in the shallows
as we walked through layers of sensation.
We had left our cast-off feet sitting pretty.

Lack of reserves, not a cent, indicates purity;
the indigent heart, or was it indignant art.
My life’s work: the breathtaking, perfect fresco

encrusted in blood, more tactile than pastels
on paper, more carnal than mute colorway. Intense.
Different. Beautiful, though. A bit too too. Red.

Come-hither eyes whose caramel influence could not
have brought us low gazing through a mask of hands.
Keep your distance. It had taken increased ability

just to be owned or given. Closer to the sea of space,
the cornerstone of the morning is about to move.
Why do they always leave these things unguarded?

The stardrive had simple controls and comfortingly
familiar accessories: fuel reserve indicators, flesh
(someone’s)-colored plastic, white rose in a bud vase,

emanating longing. Your immense life passes
in a reddened hour on board, a hundred years
blue-shifted into the increasing, unreturnable past.

They will hold you close no matter
how many silvery arms they have.


—F. J. Bergmann