Jane into the Now

She walks past, tense; into the now, oblique.

Dressed darker than damaged

in winter's last vestige,

she refracts light bent back inward,

luminescent from within.

But I feel it, her radiance;

I sense it without perception,

a welcome change to be swayed

back out of my head.

She rains down reason on me without words,

laughing softer than sane

and warm to my weird.

Shot with a tremble and her world weary sigh,

she slays me spent

toward past feigned redemptions.

Still, clawing need and knotted nerves

tear me up when we touch,

only at long last dissipating through

into her pools of blackened blue

while the Velvets serenade

on a rage of New York cool,

reflecting back a fragment

of the essence of her smile.