The Other Woman
(Sydney, Australia . . . 1991)
Published in Beacon, 1997 Edition
Copyright © 1997, 2004
Jason Lester Atkins
985 Fleet Drive, #347
Virginia Beach, VA 23454
All Rights Reserved.
We first met in the February summer
of a seaside town down under
at the shore's edge beneath southern stars
next to a busy street of seaman's bars
filled with shouting girls
selling cockles from the outer reef.
She sits in silent spaces
beckoning me with blinding traces
of flashing beams of burning love
and causes my hurting heart
to make me a martyr of emotion
I must follow in blind devotion.
A loving New Jersey land developer
named and keeps her in sweet affection
with bedroom walls of beige silk and a mirrored bed
covered in gold thread sheets from foot to head.
When you're beautiful you summon worlds.
With her rounded stern and long stems
standing at one hundred ninety two feet
she summons longing stares from shoreside street.
For cruise parties she displays her two
superb marine diesel engines and will dress
in twenty seven thousand square feet of billowing white silk sails
to flaunt a pair of red mahogany rails.
We move to one another in love
on crested sea waves of memory
and meet again last weekend
sailing up-water around Norfolk's Waterside bend.
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