CHEEKS:

Baby´s sweet cheeks, rounded, of silk-carpeted hills

Where all mothers plant kisses & their love over-spills,

Places of kiddies, smudged with snot, chocolate, old dirt,

Wiped & re-wiped, with sleeves, spit & garden-hose squirt.

 

Cheeks of young damsels, kissed by roses & ardent hot beaus,

Planted there by lovers, before, with luck, the further he goes,

Those places of butterfly kisses, casting soft shadows in mauve,

Where fingers trace maps of love, before they go daring to rove.

 

Cheeks are those rosy sweet gardens, where smiles go to play,

Where, when happiness reigns, those smiles will certainly stay,

They are places, that when sad, teardrops find their own path,

Where snowdrops freeze ruddy, then are melted by warm hearth.

 

Cheeks of old Crone, rutted & grooved by the cruel passing of time,

Powdered in magnolia-cream, futile attempt, to hide ageing lines,

White, transparent & translucent, then iced marbled in cold death,

To be granted new roses, with springtime´s new life in new breath.