Season of Burnt-Out Candelabras

The sunken blossoms have melted
from the rhododendrons as surely as wax,
leaving ragged claws
the garden books advise to “snap
off.” I could do this all day
—the narcotic jerk of my wrist,
the sticky juice of beauty come and
gone accumulating on fingertips,
its debris tossed to the ground like
ridiculous party hats crushed
while a lot of somebodies got drunk
and danced all night.

My hands flick stem to stem until
memories fumble my labyrinths, my
caves and alcoves. Way back
in there I remember a woman who was
gorgeous and young, who let an old man
take her to bed. She wanted to experience
everything from the inside out, and
probably there was a little alcohol
in the mix to help ambition along.
This man had a brain like Grand Central
Station, unbelievable traffic coming
and going. He was courtly, a gentleman.
She considered she was sacrificing herself
on behalf of experience, that kind of glib,

young notion. He was a great kisser,
putting everything that was slipping
elsewhere right up front so promise
crashed through to a whole other dimension
where you didn’t really care if it ever
got satisfied. What a surprise! She wasn’t alone
as with some of that young stuff, panting
past her like locomotives, who
left the station empty and in aftermath

leaped out of bed for a smoke. Her sweet
old man took his time. Before sex they
would have a great meal at a great restaurant
she couldn’t afford. Candles would have been
lit. Music of the sultry twenties tumbled
over them like fountains alone under stars,
say in some Italian piazza at midnight,
though that phrase would never have occurred
to her then, since she hadn’t been to Italy. You
could say this experience was like visiting
an exotic off-the-map island with room enough for
just two bodies. If he wanted rejuvenation,

she was sure he got it. And she?
She felt that kind of old that savors everything
to the last. They threw their bodies away
while they accomplished all this, and that young
alabaster cocoon of hers with skin a challenge
to velvet, became something transparent,
like the idea of never-being-old. They met

a few times like this until his reason for
being in that city took him out of even
her country and to where it was unlikely they’d
ever meet again. But somewhere now, with
age-spotted hands like mine, she could be
tossing the gaudy aftermath of rhododendron
blossoms to the plush of lawn, hauling him back
from whatever death he must surely
have had while we were both busy throwing
ourselves away on others, becoming those old
soul types who ripen young, maybe as an
unforeseen consequence of being quenched
and revived too often, before they know
much about life. It’s only luck

I lived long enough to understand who
in that fated pair was doing the sacrificing.