Adrie Kusserow: The Adoration

        What is description but encoded desire?
                                           Mark Doty
 
 
It’s morning,
I pull you from the crib
all warm and yeasty,
your hair stuck up like two soft horns,
you beaming brighter than a headlight
in anticipation of the nip,
 
Silly boy,
tender pink niblet
succulent little beast,
waternut, love blossom,
Panis bulbosa, lactata nippiana,
 
and so begins,
the verbal fevers
of my love-smitten Tourettes,
Speaking in tongues
wild with metaphor,
swinging from branch to branch of simile
rooting about for words
to match your roundness, your just succulency,
your sheer plump thigh-liness.
 
All morning I groom you with tiny lovenames.
I am a cat, you are my kitten, cowlicked
with locution. I am a sound nymph,
tickling you with alliteration, a Swedish masseuse,
rubbing you with vowels.
Who would have known my love
would rise up so fiercely, hover
delirious, in small bits of sound,
all day the adjectives landing and relanding,
determined to match your infinite perfection,
my sweet boy, my sweet boy.

Copyright 2019 Adrie Kusserow. First published in The Sun.