Neither a Concrete Nor an Absolute, Only Still a Little Wild

Think of your flesh as olive oil,
Or sesame oil or almond.
You have been smeared onto the glass
The frame of your existence holds

To prepare you for enfleurage.
Think of language and learning, think
Even of little stolen poems
As the moonlight of the blossoms,

Small petals pressed into your flesh,
Your wordless, stably oily flesh,
Petals collected before dawn,
Pressed into you by the thousands

To surrender our molecules
Of scents too delicate for steam,
Too precise and too volatile
For the rock walls of cliffs and caves.

You are not the recipient,
Although, smeared over your planed frame,
You capture and hold on to us.
You are the distillers of us,

Domesticated equipment
In service of standard process.
We were always meant for others,
Someone someday willing to pay

For our sophisticated scents.
But there we break down. We break down
So quickly, our analogies,
Our figures in air, our notes fade.