Picnic 

Picnic   

(The Mulberry Tree)

The last summer holiday.
we get off school so we decide
to take peanut butter sandwiches 
and raspberry tea
and go sit and talk and eat 
under the mulberry tree
and study The Mulberry Tree.
you observe the painted tree
is deeper into fall than we.
I watch your mouth, your lips, 
I know those lips —
leaves flare like fire —
how they taste and cushion my tongue.  
the soft yellow grass, scraps of green,
green hangs on as long as it can —
how your tongue torches thigh.
‘here’s a bush, red like yours,’ you say,
and I blush.  you eat so clean, and tear me off a piece. 
your fingers touch my lips, my greedy tongue
licks the tips, and you draw them to your mouth
and lick where I licked.  I pour tea, hot, 
honey-sweet, raspberry.  we sip, and mark the sky, 
‘the black strokes are no mistake,’ you say, 
‘Vincent was still perfecting
his technique, but he worried,’ and I say, ‘I think his
worries tortured his art, don’t you think so?’
and you say, ‘probably so.’  you ask me if my
worries torture my poems, but I need not reply . . .
for the phantasm has vanished 
and I am caught again fondling my memory 
of your lips and tongue,
my fingers stroking only a print.