Triptych

Naked form

in early

middle-age

etched

brushing

receptors

water and air

filled skin

over the soil

of sleep

in the layered 

cove

of cotton

                               the nearsighted               Sometimes

                                      night                       the images

                                     resting                  from sleeping

                                     horizontal                             stay  

                                                                             in front of        
Raising his torso              Pahn sees                his open eyes   

and turning                      columns                hallucinations   

toward her                      hovering                                       

  he sees                       over the breast          but when gone    

  three thin                    spirals of Aiks                 are seldom    

  as even as                                                      remembered    

  Slinkys                             spiraling                             again    

of smoke                    in even ringlets                                  

  rising                            several feet                             lost    

  from her chest             into the room              in the mind's    

                                                                          network

  She awakens                 He is startled                     perhaps     

  briefly                         by the lifelike          happened upon    

asking                                sense                           someday  

"What's                         of wellbeing                  by accident  

wrong?"                                                                        in a  

                                     in whole                  conversation

"Nothing"                       and sleeping                 with a lover  

   he murmurs                     feminine                                          

"All is good"                     breathing