Too Beautiful

           TOO BEAUTIFUL

            She was too beautiful,
            He decided

            When she rose the bedsheet slipped 
            To the wooden floor 
            Strewn with light,
            Thin muslin drapes luffed

            He remembered a song, the perspiration
            Just beneath her breasts,
            His awkward hands

            She left the bedsheet where it lay

            And with her tongue a poem crept in his ear
            Before he could have wondered how or
            Where she learned such things

            Looking back along the years
            He thought of the fallen bedsheet,
            The muslin drapes, the angle of the sun,
            Her patience with his youth,
            And how he pressed and pressed
            With nowhere else to go

            Maybe it was wrong, his ardour 
            So unformed, breaking and crashing
            Against her beauty in the scattered light –

            Could love be so unfrayed?


            Emanuel E. Garcia
            2014
            www.emanuelegarcia.com