Maple Sap and Rosewater

King crimson maple tree branches
dangling behind my back
behind your back,
sap speckling the park bench, rivaling this afternoon’s raindrops.
How long has the King reigned here?
Thirty years? Fifty years?

Will you beautify my life for as long as this tree has beautified this spot?
It’s pointless to conjecture.
Why dwell on the unknowable
when the knowable is all too real
and all too sublime:
that elusive sating of mind hunger
and skin hunger.

Poets propose that you touch my soul.
Scientists say you switch on my brain’s pleasure center.
Poetry or science,
press your thigh closer to mine
as leather meets velvet.

 

 

About the Poet:  Adrian Slonaker works as a copywriter and copy editor in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA. Adrian’s poetry has appeared in Amaryllis, Ginosko Literary Journal, The Mackinac, Eunoia Review, Oddball Magazine, and others.  

 

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