Betwixt

Betwixt

Diametric of a cardiac broomhead,

no lettuce in this, no rutabaga,

no osteothrombosis. Sometimes,

I wonder why we bother.

Jared walks the streets with a

spool of yellow string,

playing his life like a kite:

dentist, pawnshop, chowder hall,

cobbler. At the end of the

day, he retraces his route,

winding it all back.

Candace smiles,

stripe of snow in a ruby sandwich.

Jared, you marvel of a man.

Passersby freeze at the inequality,

this blatant mismatch,

tennis shoe, designer pumps,

insult to good sense.

But they have no idea.

Deep in a grumble,

Jared scuffled the sands of

San Gregorio, following the

flight of a raven spied

Candace in a kaftan the

salmon of eastern

clouds at sunset.

A single loose thread,

trailing all the way down the cliff.

He ran to the base and

pulled, and pulled and pulled,

till she stood atop the

bread-dough bluff a

naked Aphrodite, holding the

last of the thread in her fist,

a capillary of fierce intent.

She scratched her number in

the hollow of a clamshell,

tied the thread to a

hole in the edge and

flung it over.

From Michael J. Vaughn: Collected Poems