LINGER

Set adrift on the scent of a woman

Caught in the breath of her haunting cologne

Though I see her not, I breathe her in

‘Cause she’s in the wind whenever it blows

On the ghost of her presence,

I sail the seas of “once upon”

Unseen, she wraps her arms around me

Drawing me into the warm embrace of time and chance continuum

Long after her voice dies away

She, in the air, lingers

And though I look away from her reminiscence

My nose, a willing prisoner

A broken spring, she is

An invitation to bury the nose in the air

And though I recognize no more do we belong

Still I breathe, ‘cause she dwells in the air, somewhere