Santa Catalina Mountains from Saguaro National Park — Image by kenne
GENEROSITY
She brings him the licks
of a good guitarist,
a jarful of sky
from the tallest mountain
she has never bothered to climb,
shows him the shoeprint
of her favorite thief,
melting in a bank of April snow
just beyond her bedroom,
and when she kisses him
she tastes
a bundle of berries
too numerous to eat.
She stares into his beautiful
bloodshot eyes, believing
she looks
like the perfect gift
with those ribbons
in her hair; he cannot
refuse the ample lesson
her body was built
to provide. She has only
to ask him once
to fasten the fingers on
and set upon her nightly,
learning the stops
and limits of her song —
the vibrato of the dark
the spidery scales,
the frets along her spine.
— Charles Rafferty
