ON A NYC STOOP ON THIS DAY OF ATONEMENT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csE28cJxxNE
For Samira

Had we met
forty years ago
we'd have had
a grand time
setting each other
on fire.
It would have been lovely
to be both ignitor
& charred; pyromaniacs
of the soul; LaVern Baker's
Angel Heart.

Your eyes belied
the lust your body struggles
to contain. Brown & burning
they see too much & try
to offer so little, but
they fail to protect
or to serve you well.

We're trapped
in our own time
& by our own sense
of morality
while cowboys ride
faraway fences
& Aretha Franklin
moans in the dark.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016