Cellist

Cello makes rich noises while pushing up
the green skirt and pressing between
the bare knees, as cello and cellist
(who teases out the cello's rapture
into fine-spun silken thread) seem
to have their way with each other,
but she only uses this buffoon,
is far away in her pale blue intentness,
making love to one whose voice
is the cello's voice, whose body
she creates with what she steals
from this hollow wooden instrument
that perhaps thinks it's getting a good deal
between her legs. But the cello, too,
is cheating: It pretends it is a living
bough, this bow the wind, these
delicate fingerings the touches
of skittering leaf and squirrel, swells
her strokings into the sough of a forest,
where even now she meets the one
who speaks with its voice.

Dean Blehert

Last Updated: October 5, 2002