Taking a Prisoner

Until all my careless clues
trigger a police fax of the photo
from my driver’s license
and a copy of this poem from the web ---
I could keep her tied and hydrated,
feeding all her favorites, spooning
soft foods into her snarling lips:
banana compote, strawberries and cream.
So romantic it would be ---
just the two of us.
I would feed her every dream
except her dream of standing
on her own unbound feet and walking away ---
unlike those Chinese women whose insteps
were uselessly twisted by their masculine masters;
they so admired the beauty of a captive female.

A more conventional marriage could, long ago,
have satisfied this hunger for human closeness.
I could have imprisoned one of my stunning butterflies,
her bright blue wings legally pinned into a lovely
concrete block home near the good schools ---
until the fight had forever gone out of her.
I could have given her another tiny butterfly
to attend: emerged from the same jade chrysalis as this,
our wedded bliss. A beautiful little fluttering creature,
born into captivity, will never know the taste of the open sky.

While standing in a freezing mountain stream,
with the sun beginning to sink yellow
into the water rushing around my knees,
I muscle a shivering rainbow trout from the rapids.
Her silver side is painted neon pink and lavender.
I hold her terror tightly between my rough hands.
She looks at me like the doom I seem to be,
her mouth moving soundlessly in some silver
language I have never learned, but comprehend.
This is a being too gorgeous to kill.
Before her spirit drains between my fingers,
I give her back to the river.
I give my longing itself back to the rushing river.