THE RAIN
         By Robert Mauro

Whispers in the night like black satin
tiny fingers on my skin and tongue
remembering the dead quiet with one
dripping down warm rivulets run
an embrace of wet remembered sun
holding me as the arms of loved one


     MY LOVER'S BODY
     By Robert Mauro

Like softly varnished Spanish
paintings: a stretched out
El Greco, she seems to glow.
Oh, no, not there, she moans,
here.  Her underwear like
Queen Anne's lace; so
Georgia O'Keeffe down 
where the lilies bloom
in our afternoon; so like 
a swan in my one good arm,
feathers ruffled; cries
like lunes.  She bends
like me but doesn't break;
she comes for fun,
moon licks the lake.


       THE GEOMETRY OF LOVE
         By Robert Mauro

My love she moves in perfect circles
and me?  Isosceles and some right angles.
When we did tend our fertile garden,
to Tantalus we never begged his pardon.
The Greeks would be so proud of us:
she a peristyle; me an obelisk.
No sculptor could her skin suggest.
My body?  Braque -- Picassoesque.
And yet, and yet, our fertile garden,
we'd "plow and plow" in Homeric jargon.


     THE ART OF LOVE
     By Robert Mauro

If Van Gogh had painted her,
she'd be a starry night
roiling in blues and pinks.
Monet?  A field of poppies,
brilliant, an impression of
nature: a new light, I think.
Lautrec?  A wreck, depression,
neglect, so dimly lit, showing
a bit of leg in lace, I suspect.
Giotto?  Flat or somewhat.
A sensual soul -- angelic.
Picasso?  A hat.  Entangled.
An angle.  Black and blue.  A gnu.
Dali?  Melting in time.
Persistent.  Sublime.