Reading Ruskin

I try to read Ruskin, but you insinuate my leaves - you come between
			him
			and me.

I try to source his words, but you speak, and spiral in, coiling my inner ear
	you
fill me with incessant whispering ...

I try to comprehend his logic, then
			fully feel your mouth on mine ...
and see the way your stance is
your essence, the referent for the man ...

I try and grasp his sense but I fill-up with your eyes until I brim
replete and crimson as a goblet of warm wine ...

I jig this new day's blue - charged, electric, wired
		one evening spent with you ...
		still see your hair swing as you move ...

I look out of my window but my thought is not expansive - it is specifically placed:
	honed-in and magnetised, it
			turns
			rests and twitches
			quivering at you

and I wonder if you
		think of me at all and
		what you think of me ...
			do I imprint your day as you do mine?

... again I feel your velvet arm, the thigh beneath your jeans
		hard under palm
your birds' eggs eyes, flecked, light green light almond warm ...

There was distraction as your mind veered and coursed -
			flying the inner space I could not go -
		the stupour deep, a true  n a r c o t i c
		(the rush of blood in me was by the drug: proximity)
			so suck me in by nose and mouth
			take me in the vein ...

I was jealous of its power to take you on the fade to a decrease of distance -
horizon-lines
	intensifying
	the presence of silence and silverlode ...

Will you let me dig the mineral layer,
			calibrate the geometry of core and axis, arc and line,
let me delve chalcedony,
			the ore cool in the hand,
			its whole blue weight
			a lodestone found -

(I'll put it to my ear and hear it breathe
	... A r c a d i a ...)
			smile on waking
			smile of greeting
			finger-graze across the face
			embrace
			that makes me feel forever

			possible ...

Countless draughts I need
		to stay this sleep
			and keep you real - my dream within a 		dream -
			the place you haunt and live in -
		
		my palm of love laid on your living skin ...

previous poem