Newish Poem

 AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION IN TEN PARTS

How, each of her ten

moves their tips

to undo me,

capillaries driven

into rivers,

hair rising

to attention,

each touch

a crescent flake 

from a fresh croissant,

a decimal presence 

making me tense. 

How tenfold

her fingers print

and my tactile index 

seems to curl.

And what’s merely binary 

binds only

a tenth of what swirls 

in the bloodstream:

How whatever world 

I miss—

being numb or number—

still counts as being

under her thumb.

I don’t know where

her tracing a line 

on my palm

might divine it 

in the next.  

Or why her slender thumbs 

oppose with such grace

(Might they 

oppose me tonight?)

I don’t know where

she’s gone now,

but for so long

on each 

of her fingertips 

a maze meant 

uncertain directions

of certain hands—

a maze meant

a logarithm 

of her ways—

a maze meant

whorls . . .