from Something Solid: Miscellaneous Sonnets: Nymphet III
How
far can she take it, her body, her looks, how
steep will the dare be? I watch the nymphet, idling
behind her mother in the supermarket line,
and wonder, do an appraisal, just as she must
be doing a self-appraisal of her own. My mind
moves out, runs into the brain of Yeats, hovering
somewhere in distant space. The sage answer
he gives is simple: it depends, in any context
or situation to befall her, whether she means
it or not; whether she is in earnest. What beauty
buys is nothing if not hitched to a set heart and
brain. She looks to me, here, as though she
means it, alright; tying her shirt in a knot to reveal
her midriff, caressing herself restlessly with
her hands. What’s at stake is not merely her
body & face but her life; what it means, where it
may go. I have to look away, but when I look back
she’s gone. She’s left an imprint on my imagination
about youth, possibility, eternity (even),
worlds while they are in the process of opening
up, which the soul can see “forever” in. May
outside, first heat, & the revelation of what ricochets,
here, into the ethereal. She is, I’m sure, in
the car by now, weighed down by groceries, mind
already past her solitary passion. My own solitary
passion, as I walk down Butler Pike, is merely
to register having seen something someone else
saw (Yeats), the heaven and the hell of it, & in earnest, myself.
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