(Brassica oleracea)

Glorious for weeks now, pale leaves shining green,
and at last the smallest of sprouts appearing —
sitting tight like tiny Buddhas on the stalks,
rounding daily, bulking up against the cold.

Too close to hard frost.

The kitchen clock turns.
Last night in a café, two college girls at the next table.
Luminous.  Perfect calves and streaming manes of hair, 
their skin so creamy, their bodies tight and soft and muscled.
They wear stockings ripped in artistic swirls, revealing breath-
taking hints of their velvet thighs.

I am not twenty any longer, nor even thirty.  I wanted
to fall upon them, wolfish, sink my teeth into their taut haunches, ravenous 
for their energy, their bodies, their beauty,
their simple perfection, their lives all before them, lovers yet 
to come and be gone, nights to greet them, mornings to greet
them.  I wanted to pull up their shirts and run my hands over
their warm stomachs, the slight roundness.  I wanted to rip their
stockings to shreds — tear them, learn mysteries with my tongue running
the full length of  their electric legs.  The end of September
means nothing to them, only another living day, another day with endless
numbers of days open ahead.  Fall is nothing.  Brussels sprouts
waxing too late is nothing.  The coming winter and the dark short days
are nothing.  They are made of light.  

Their mourning has not yet come.  
Their beds have not been achingly empty.  
Their hearts still bloom open, full-flowering and redly alive.
Their hearts are not folded 
folded
folded

rimed with frost.