Saturn’s Return

She was ravishing in rags
She banished gloom from the drag
Serving fantasies by the bag
Any eye would be
Taken in by the shine
Oh it’s no use cryin’
Over spilt wine
And no use whining
About wilted vines
Especially when the vineyard
Was never mine

She interrupted nothing
Nothing at all
I was deeply contemplating
The nearest wall
Intent on procrastinating
A perfectly good day away
But I lost sight of my priorities
And put the pause button on delay

Maybe it was her eyes
Or maybe her ink
Maybe it was her fire
Or just my drink
Whatever it was that made me think
Thoughts that came
With a nudge and a wink
A voice in my head that seductively said
I can always do nothing tomorrow instead

Words had such a way with her
Acrobatic enough to insert
Terms like “hyperbolic tesselation”
In the course of casual conversation
Dangling participles in anticipation
Of furtive yet fruitless flirtations
Daring you to confess incomprehension
Of notions which defy explanation

She had a way of waxing eloquent
On any subject she’d care to invent
She was of roundly angular bent
And I was rarely sure exactly what she meant
She always assumed that you understood
I always assumed I eventually would

Maybe it was her eyes
Or maybe her ink
Maybe it was her fire
Or just my drink
Whatever it was that made me think
Thoughts that came
With a nudge and a wink
A voice in my head that seductively said
I can always do nothing tomorrow instead

Classy and class-conscious all at once
She dropped out of finishing school
And jumped into the blue gene pool
Elitism isn’t for everyone, she said
The books kept slipping off my head
And anyway they’d rather be read

What a bundle of conflicted contradictions
A wonderful mess of conflated convictions
In a ribbon-red dress defying description
Surfing the wave of Saturn’s Return
She had three triple lifetimes to burn
And so when she said shall we then go
And I said where and she said you know
She said you know
She said you know

Maybe it was her eyes
Or maybe her ink
Maybe it was her fire
Or just my drink
Whatever it was that made me think
Thoughts that came
With a nudge and a wink
A voice in my head that seductively said
I can always do nothing tomorrow instead