Suzanne R. Harvey
Sheltering the Enemy
You invade my territory
Marching in like some usurper
Armed to homestead the land
Carve out your corner
Stake your claim
Plead your case for squatter’s rights
What’s your weapon anyway
The tropic core beneath that crust of ice
The electric eye that links with mine
And burrows out secrets buried there
The tongue of honey that can season
Inauthentic brass with the elixir of eloquence
The arm that inches within stalking distance
As we discuss the merits of your recent novel
In the corner of a bookstore
I should evict you from this house
You’re no fit tenant for a landlord turned fifty
You and this feeling that I’m twenty
And ripe to launch my skiff on an uncertain sea
Where the tide will never ebb or the wind subside
Where the moon will wax out of season
And you and I will beach this boat on an island
Where we’ll waltz beneath a crystal chandelier
In some exotic ballroom
Where the fingers on the clocks are frozen.
poetrymagazines note: 'Sheltering the Enemy', SLANT, Vol.4 (Summer 1990); Poetry Salzburg Review, No.12 (Autumn 2007); and A Tiara for the Twentieth Century: The Collected Poems of Suzanne Richardson Harvey (McKinleyville, California, USA: Fithian Press, 2009), p.115.
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