A Girl, Walking By

Perfume
Just a trace, a lingering
Lavender maybe, something delicate
A rustling of skirts
Breeze outlined memories of glimpsed curves
A few simple lines drawn in empty space
Where for a moment a girl stood
Paused, turned maybe
Nothing now but an echo
A fingerprint left in the dark
Behind my eyelids
Something graceful, impressions of fluid motion
The architecture of muscle hung over bone
Lacings if tendon
Held in brief tension
Something of marble, something of ebony
Maybe, perhaps
Material and animal, flesh and salt
The tang of it just under the tongue
All just a vague sense of something beautiful
That passed through my life
The idea of the sign of an emblem
Of a girl who just walked by
Perfect and free
Taking absolutely none of me with her
In her passage,
Just leaving me with a breath of perfume
As the blood in my veins
Becomes honey and wine.