a poem is walking three paces ahead of me on
the sidewalk, morning sun throwing a
spare effigy of her off her feet into the shrubs ahead
bending fifty degrees to our right;

the grey semblance, too, holds its own
elongated cell phone with no words for
leaves passing through it even when thrown against the
gated community’s stuccoed wall.

The poem’s white and grey and blue cross-trainers tread
fitfully under the contours of ankles, calves, thighs the
black white-hemmed sport shorts leave open for
easy motion.

Sunlight makes steady passage on the poem’s legs toned
near sport-culture ideal in sculpt-ankle, calf-curve --
muscle never straying to bulge as it rounds inward to
knee joint, then rises wine flute-goblet thigh proportional

to the mouths of cloth closing
modesty over declivities and contours
still moving
above.

The poem’s cross-trainers slow a dozen strides for more intense
monologue on the cell phone mimicked in the leaning grey
scrubbing noiselessly ahead on the slumpstone blocks cemented
against our passing, whatever our pace or angle.

Morning sun admires how finely the poem’s epidermis flexes stride
by stride over tendon and muscle: no need for air brush if
this were photo shoot; no tattoo, no varicosae, no vestige of scrape on
barbed wire or fence slat; no blister from beach fire or tanning bed; no

scar from acid spill, poison oak, ladder rung, dog bite, bike chain,
mower blade, horse hoof, car crash, vein-stripping, orthopedist,
neurosurgeon, biopsy, oncologist…
yet….