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A
Sestina of Splintered Kisses
Palos Verdes stones shine in the seafoam:
quilted, comforted, then splintered,
cast aside with faithless kisses,
left in longing to be captured
and caressed within rose
lips, resting still as stones.
Once-loving words became as stones
to pelt the fragile seafoam
silken lace with rose
embroidered bodice -- splintered
in a deft design that captured
her peach neck past-framed in kisses.
Now alone she kisses
no one where she sits among the stones
and contemplates a sea crab, captured
in a pond, the wake of seafoam.
Here her thoughts shoot forth in splintered,
single memories of her fragile coral rose.
“Him,” she wonders . . . If she rose
unto him, offered him a crystal vase of kisses,
would he dash that vessel splintered,
crashing on behemoth stones.
Could she then find comfort in the seafoam,
swirling where that sea crab still lies captured.
Alone upon that jetting rock she lingers, captured,
after mounting days of mourning where the seas rose,
spilling faithfully their seafoam,
softly tending to the granite with their sacrificial kisses,
in a cleansing rhythm to appease the cold stones
that have left so many captured ships lie splintered.
She concludes there is a special solace in the splintered,
spacial distance of her thorny thoughts, not captured
in the logic of a sentence. So, alone among the stones,
she finds succor in her own imaginary rose
whose velvet lips she kisses,
mimicking the seafoam.
. . . And her tender coral rose
returns those special kisses,
once again, just like the seafoam.. . .
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