First Love

I’m your road not taken,

the glittering phantom possibility

of what might have been.

So I never stop dancing

in your periphery,

taboo . . . forbidden fruit,

your eternal pomegranate

in this inversion,

this corruption of love

(they say)

But you know I never could

resist

a double dare,

didn’t want to

keep my shirt on,

hold my horses

Always

too big for my britches

Shotgun

How many weddings

apart will we drift

on this sea more perilous than

Poseidon, Ithaca always

out of reach?

I’m eternally

jumping out of the path

of the speeding train

into the slow death

of your embrace