Little flames play against the old lady's neck,
turning before the darkness of her dress,
as she waits in line for his viewing.
She fingers the white ghosts,
which rise in a slow timeless tumbling,
swirling past each other in their crystal sphere.
They fade into translucence, to turn
and reappear in fire or dead white stone.
Iridescent bursts of pinks and greens and blues.
A universe sealed in her miniature globe,
an eternity at the base of her withered neck.
Sibyl
Look down from your mountain air.
Come home again
on these eastward blowing winds.
Winter's high thin cold
has only paled your skin,
not flushed your blood as I would.
Sibyl, you could be a swan and I
a hot spring in winter's air,
my mouth around your thighs,
my love, a steam against the cold.
Mike Smetzer's work has been
published in New Letters, West Branch, Cottonwood,
Hanging Loose, and he has two chapbooks: A Quiet Man and Teaching
the Clergy to Dance. Some of his published work appears at http://mikesmetzer.wordpress.com/
