Reading these Japanese love poems, light
with the brevity of love, hard with the hours
of love, these women endure dreams
of lovers not half as sweet as their fingerprints on tea leaves.

I much prefer the dreaming
world; I long for dark and ache at dawn.
I dream of your breath cooling me like mint,
your embrace as we coil, the focus of your lips
against mine as we make love, the inability
of your hand to make a bruise--

to place another plum
in the porcelain of my skin.