dimpled eye

I look into your dimpled eye
        and it draws me
out of myself and into a place
        inscrutable and haunting and full of yearning
but for what?

You’re not like your “brother”
        who Tigger-like is everywhere at once
out there, in your face, ring around the rosie
        here’s my duck! here’s my ball!
wanna play?

You are alpha, first, but not last, in our hearts
        Stonington Bear
named for a most favorite place
        cold water and hard stone
                grey granite ledges clung by spruce and cedar and rugosa
        granite boulders, huge beyond imagining
                tossed and tussled on Little McGlathery’s outer shore
        solitary erratic just there, as if it were always there
                as if it will always be there, heedless of tide or my stare
        Lynne captured a harbor porpoise mid-leap
                frozen in her frame, but glistening, pulsating, wild
        once we paddled in mist, water’s surface quiet and uncanny, like glass
                troubled only by the dip of our blades or the rising of a porpoise
it draws me, draws me out, draws me away … and brings me home

I look into your dimpled eye
        and it draws me
is it wistfulness, resignation, distress, just old-body weariness?
        or do you just want to be loved, without seeming too eager
to draw me, draw me away, draw me in … to you?