Portrait of a Friend (name witheld/female) 3 Feb 2008

(note, I cant get the spacing in the text to work the way I'd like.)

That white flutter chancing just above the roiling water is a Brazilian Swallow crossing the Rio Negro in a rainstorm.
Between each wing thrust the bird dips towards a wet oblivion;
Her hard grey tongue shape shouts her life forwards
into the
crosswind.

Hesitant, she is half-way across the wide channel.

Her tail, the most delicate thing, forks
and tapers to points like the Christmas time candy cane that you sharpened to a white spike between your teeth and the rolling lathe of your teenage tongue.

You held it there, suspended in your mouth
hesitant to try on your hands the sharp point
that your young tongue had fashioned
from such sweetness.

Aaron Allen