Carnivorous

I am wearing your hand prints painted on this t-shirt,

thumbs, digits in glitter the colors of Autumn,

that fall I was headed for years later,

& you moving to Houston, you never to know

that cactus rustle also in my dreams,

the spikes, the flytraps of Venus,

a flowering which baits, clamps, sucks up the juice,

cunning, that borrowing of strength, no thievery,

never a loan for what other resource to use,

what other in the end, reciprocal:

your hand dance on this shirt, the hands

your own painted, a mirroring of palms

for the gulfstream I flowed through over time,

over geography, relinquishing the teeth

I could have sunk in, but never this distance,

the lightness of it, a different dream worn:

deserts, stillness, the scope of vulva pulpits,

of interior hills, of holding, of still being held. Having worked a variety health care and Civil Service jobs to pay the bills, Stephen Mead, now retired, always managed to squeeze out time for writing poetry/essays and creating art.