Seduction
by Jonathan Musgrove


You and I lay together on a grassy bed
while one sparrow chased another from a limb.
A bumblebee left a flower he seduced,
and flew away covered in her scent.
I reached my lips to catch your lips before
they turned away. “Just a kiss, please a kiss.”



“It always starts the same way, with just a kiss,
then maybe a nibble, soon we’re in bed.
I know I should stop now, end it before
it begins.” My tongue up your limb,
climbing your thigh, drunk with the scent
of sweet sun-warmed skin, feeling flesh seduced.



My mind began to wander, as you were seduced
though I never told (my mouth filled with a kiss).
I dreamed about the ocean’s salt sea scent
and infinite horizon. From the seabed
a scaly creature climbed on newly grown limb.
Feathers formed, turned to hairs, and before



the kiss ended, a man stood where fish stood before.
I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I was seduced
into fantasy, as we groped limb in limb,
about all the human beings who kiss
like we kiss, and have kissed in bed,
on horses, in cars, on grass, in water, scent



of summer rain mixed with the human scent
of sweat sweet excitement I’ve felt before.
We should have made love, that morning, on that bed.
The air was warm, the light danced on leaves seduced
by gentle winds, I started with the perfect kiss.
You sat, anxious, a bird on a swaying limb.



Were you distracted by wind moving a limb?
All the ingredients for love, with the scent
of danger from a public eye, mixed in a kiss.
I know you have been this close before,
and your mother, her mother, fathers seduced.
For thousands of years humans lay in this bed.



Let me caress you, kiss before kiss.
These lines are our limbs, to be seduced,
these scented words our licks, this page our bed.