A Daughter of Jerusalem

I am seized by love of lips-
faintly French or South Italian,
pulled low with curling mockery,
painted autumn red, berry, brown.
With slipping tongue of confidences and leanest laughter,
the flare that is beauty's blend of iron word and whisper
I am startled by the certainty
that I've always known her name.

In diaries of dreamy indecision
she quarters, curls and halves
a painter's curve of horizon's color and clearest line,
fumbles for a healing course
between family church and freer will.
I think of her
as hours, as days
that fill with tender calls to weary children,
smoker's drawl and comic spin,
instruction's reach by confession into closure.

"The verse you seek is Solomon's," she promised.
"The chapter is yours to choose."
But all his songs are similes for beauty,
their strength in blank verse veneration.
She requires more than declarations,
more than lines of pleasing elegance.

I am seized by love and wit,
a warming touch of choir call and family private joke,
her weekly work of teaching and being taught.
I turn to her from dawn's first look
through day's determination.
There is no further plan.