Tuesdays I Wear Perfume for a Bison
       

When the garden greens lean into a narrow bitter
and the snap peas collapse in the heat
and the knobby yellow squash cries, do not forsake me,
oh please devour, in the end I'd rather,
it is time to return to the bison and display
no offense at her stellar indifference.

Seventy feet away she smells me exiting
the car, the leathery Hermes florals, sugarwrap
kite notes, I wear my best scent
for her. I like to do that, smell
the same, that she knows it's me coming.

A bison's water bowl is a claw-footed bathtub.
A bison's down comforter on a chilly night
is a dungheap mixed in loose earth.
A bison wallowing on a hospitable dungheap
is enormous brown happiness.

I've secretly renamed her.
Billie, may I be frank?
Very few men have mastered
the art of superior kissing.

When scolding a stubborn man
the lesson is far better grasped
in an improper venue
wasn't it the pretty ballroom dancer
who spat, don't give me your shoulders.
The moment you give me your
shoulders you submit to me.
Don't submit to me
in Tango.

Why couldn't I have been a female buffalo
skipping and sauntering and time-lazy
in love with a female buffalo
and nobody to brother our love?

Free to promenade our way over hill and hollow,
blizzard curses stunning our sentiments in winter,
rough footing elsetimes,
but always together shoulder to shoulder,
hump to hump, snout to snout, below the shadow
of snow-collared lodgepole pines.
Come the clutter of blooming spring
and us simply occasioning by,
a trove of ardor to wave us past.

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Copyright © 2018 Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow All rights reserved
from Horn Section All Day Every Day
Salmon Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission