Don Yorty
5
When I think of all the lovers I’ve had
it’s a blur, I’m afraid, of quantity
but there was quality in quantity
angels found in the common crowd, riffraff
whose amorous wings, far from this fact called earth
took me up in heavenly abstraction
from the orgy really to the action
of orgasm when remembered or birth
or flame or premonition, Adam Eve.
Who can tell us what has been? For love you
have to wait, be as chosen as a Jew.
Love’s not Godot though and fortunately
when I think of Love’s smile softly I can
remember those lips. Whose? I’ve forgotten.
Don Yorty is the author of the poetry collections A Few Swimmers Appear (Philadelphia Eye and Ear, 1980) and Poet Laundromat (Eye and Ear Downtown, 1983) and a novel, What Night Forgets (Herodias, 2000). His work appears in Out of This World: An Anthology of the St. Mark’s Poetry Project 1966-1991 (Three Rivers Press, 1991). Don has a BA in Latin and Greek from the City University of New York and an MA in TESOL. A poet and garden activist, Don lives in New York City, works on sonnets, and blogs at donyorty.com.
This poem is not previously published.