Gold Leaves Someone ought to write about (I thought and therefore do) stage three of alchemy: not inauspicious metal turned into a gilded page, but that same page turned back to basics when you step outside for air and feel a radiance that was not there the day before, your sidewalks lined with gold. Five-Finger Exercise When things get hot and heavy this weekend or one August twenty years from now, and I start tapping hexameters up and down the shoulder-blades of my beloved (insert auspicious, trustworthy-sounding, stolid but fun name here for I can conjure none), I hope I do it right, never losing sight of the skin whose golden toughness allows the counting, never moving my fingers so briskly that I can't hear his breathing, and never forgetting, even in the lonely heights of sublimest inspiration— What is your substance?... O rose ... and grey and full of sleep— to flip the warm flesh over and whisper, It had to be you.
