GODDESS

Whoa, I said. That sounds like you saw a goddess.
That time you took too big a hit off a joint
at your friend's place in Philly, started coughing
your lungs out, got a really bad head rush
and sat back in the spindly, second-hand easy chair
to close your eyes, and let the black come funneling in.
That's when you received your particular vision,
or hallucination, or whatever you want to call it,
of a real Fifties-style house wife in white dress,
all cool, immaculate moon-strung flesh,
who waved her arm like a game-show girl
at a painting in dark Rembrandt oils
of sausages and various kinds of sandwich meats.
Oh yes, I said. She might not have had
many arms swirling in helicopter-blade embrace,
she might not have had a dun-colored bosom
you could have been drawn up into
like the beginnings of deepest ocean.
But yes, certainly. She was a goddess, none-the-less.