Ode To Virginia Poem by Susan Detlefsen

She fills the page with every known variety of woman
and of man,
with the contents of a room
an ocean shore
a railway car.

Imperceptible signs fill her.
A smoke ring issues from her lips.
Her phrases have a life of their own
flinging themselves defiantly against death.

I pick up each word, gingerly, as if with sugar tongs,
tasting, inhaling, ingesting
every drop she's spilled
of every word
of every color
of every city
of every pulse and every emotion, blessed and cursed
of Neville, of Susan, of Rhoda, Ginny, Louis, and even Bernard,
until the waves wash over me and
I hear Virginia's blood purring in my ear.