Sacred Love
The trees practice it
all winter—the honey
locusts, with their spiritual
thorns, their dry pods
of sweetness,
the death pale birches
like bony priestesses
and the deflowered flower
girl plums, naked
and wind-thrashed,
in bruise colors.
But, what ascetic hermit
can resist disporting
when April unbosoms!
one of Vermeer’s women,
dressed up in such lush
tapestries, lavish embroideries,
brazen perfumes—