This poem is called ‘Pilot Light’, and I’m thinking of the image of the Virgin as Star of the Sea which guides sailors on a dark night, but it begins with the image of sex as a kind of cowboy bare-back show, and it ends with the image from Homer of Odysseus in the sea washed up exhausted on the beach.
Pilot Light
Palomino country. The midnight rodeo.
Then, “I’ve got to get back.” But his sleep
Was sea-rattle and sigh
On a round-pebbled beach
And she was his hold on the sand
Underneath. “Wake him up. Make him go.”
But each fold and pore of his cheek
In the wash of the lamp, eyelashes at rest
Where there’d be a dash of cleavage if
She wasn’t on her back, his trust, weight,
Odysseus exhaustion, said no -
Give us three minutes more. Till she
Was sleep too: weed-swirl, out of depth,
At one with the sea of his breath.
More From neanton
neanton Recommends
- “Light of the Wicked” by Fred Hurr (rklesc)
- Amsterdam – More Than Just Red Light Districts and Cannabis Smoke-Filled Coffee Houses! | The World According to Dave (The World According to Dave)
