The picture you hold in some

Far corner of a fiefdom not yet

Reached (a place where

Sinuosity stalks with the grace

Of your outstretched calf and

Strikes with the repeated

Forked breath of beseeching

Lightning) questions the arts

Of power as conquest; the snarl

As touch-me-not, the litheness

As invitation to admire come

To naught at the corners of your

Lips, where the clear desire is all

To be encased in another skin,

Holding taut to yourself as one

With the imagined rider, catamount

To every undestroyed dream.