the thrill of missing meters

if you played the inker
in a latticed leafy space,
and gave tattoos with a grave
sense of silky weaving
across the web of arms and face-

if tatooed skin you also spun
like gems revolved within a drum,
the pearly polished discharge
would leap in arcs electric,
the shadows and flickers caught
in gray-green mezzotints-

if savagely wet we also pressed
against a cushion of yielding moss,
and worshiped in a moment
the issued scent of slippery dew,
grown musky from the green blossom thrust-

when sweat trickles but ink persists,
caressed by twigs but not released:
who could doubt our verdigris?