Dragonfly Tattoo

Dipping inks under my skin, he paints me at a window,

Raising blood from my arm relaxed across his lap.

An illustrated man changes me forever:

Guiding lines of pain for a portrait

Of fierce beauty, he gives my shoulder flight.

Now and then he looks up to catch the likeness

From the bestiary, and the corroborating

Look on my face:  the delicate fatal lip.

"Yes, we've got her!"  He lays down his needles.

Tempting a shared imagination to alight in the flesh

And tracing its trajectory

Turns two into one,

Tumbling the transformed, transforming pair

Over and over in the act

On wings of art.

                                                                    Camp Scripps, 2004(?)