What To Buy A Woman Poem by Grahame Lockey

What to buy a woman who’s grown up with quality,
who sums its parts up, knows the names it calls us with?

What would suit a woman who wears the right decision,
who has the measure of what stands out, whose wardrobe bursts like buttons?

What would match a woman whose shapeliness no cut pulls off,
who looks her best when she’s undressed, who’s softer than brushed cotton?

What to hand a woman who lugs no baggage, travels light –
backpockets all she needs to not slow down?

How set off a woman whose smile-ignited mine-blast eyes
put diamonds out, flaw platinum, deglister gold, fog silver?

What to place in fingers that play on mine a melody of contact
whose reach can teach, whose grasp trawls?

Nothing, to speak of.
Things no shop sells, things we cannot wrap, or hold.
Like the chance to guess what you are
as your press yourself into my acceptant hands like a present;
the break to work you from a box
that keeps you mint somehow, repackably.
If you hung your memories on hangers, I could slide through them for something
you have yet to try on, but we have not walked in that wardrobe.
So I buy you a cookery book. Guess I won’t be eating tonight.