Apricots

Plain fare for the heart
the cook books offer with dried apricots,
or marvellously coloured confections
when the juice is restored;
the measure of flamboyance
is your own, with whatever memories
you have of the exact time of ripening
and all its summer associations.

Brochures tout diet and skin creams
urging me to preserve supple flesh,
persuade moisture between my thighs
as though to reconstitute you
into the permanent summer idyll
of apricots and honey, love liquid—

but this wanting sonnet has an addendum
of your dry ash in a dry urn.