In Anticipation of Some Good Migration

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The fabric of your top was so thin

That when you set yourself on the sand between me and the skip-stone

 Sun I could see your shape veiled by it,

Something dark beneath airy gold. 

​

With the soft pad of your fingertips

You swiped the grit from the corner of your glossed-up lip

Then pointed skyward and said loudly for the wind

That never yet has a swallowtail alighted thereupon it. 

​

I set myself to figuring the cost

Of this winged thing engraved in the gold of a marriage band. 
Then the falling orb revealed again the silhouette of your breasts 

Beneath those flaming threads of little substance.

​

I quit my math for the sight of it. 

The metaphor was tattered and senseless. 

You were the swallowtail, not I. 

​

And that coastal wind set your outstretched palm to dancing,

Gently lifted, fingers flutter, fleeting thing. 
So I set myself to figuring the cost of insect pins --

Perhaps they come in holy gold.