Poetry

STUDY OF GREEN #3: CELADON

Ode to a Sung Dynasty celadon vase
trapped in a museum display case.

I could eat you.
Pierce your icy skin
with my favorite dainty dessert spoon
removing half-moon morsels from your rim
sucking on each ice-cream cold minty bit
till it melted.
I would scoop out
ripe, curling petals
from the warmer flesh of your
succulent, translucent summer-melon belly
leaving behind only a bone-yellow rind
seated on a red felt square.
Alas
my hot breath is not enough
to melt the glass between us.

First published in West Wind Review, twenty-third anthology.