When Will We Begin?

King Wen decides five fires
for us, draws a small atlas
of chances on the moon,
opens lemons like a mind.

You're that difficult to seduce.
So I shake yarrow,
read fish bone,
throw dice at fireflies

until my limbs phantom
& the sea dresses me in salt
& you sing the song
that happens to you when each lip—

tipped urchin says he's the blackest
flower of them all.

Copyright © 2005 Eric Elshtain All rights reserved
from The Literary Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission