21 Words for Your Left Breast

Everybody says the eskimos
have 20 words for snow
as though that example
best captures the truth of
each thing's subtle complexity.

Well, I have 21 words
for just your left breast
this morning,
and each is untranslatable
and by noon expired from currency.

Four words described your left breast's shape
in the minutes before you woke
as you shifted against the mysteries in a dream.

Seven more conveyed your left breast as
qualities of weight when in my hand and mouth
and when against me and the sheet
at different angles.

Five words generalized it as stages of arrousal
with special nuances on its density against my tongue
and the nipple's degrees of eraser-like gumminess.

One was for it when I suddenly closed my eyes
and it echoed as a retinal ghost.

Three were for it as tastes.

Two were it as poetic inspirations
that, as yet, have no meaning
in the world or mental awareness.
(Thus they have been excluded from my sum of 21.)

And the last word was for your left breast as
it hung above me like a sky heavy with rain
and I completely lost track of what it even was.

So, the eskimos can keep their 20 words for snow
and can teach them to philosophy students.
I'll just try to pay attention
as the dictionary of your body writes itself in my eyes
and then vanishes before anyone can nod in understanding.



by jerry gordon
9.4.05