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That Host

by Bruce Bennett

Where did I get the idea I should save you?
You didn’t need saving; you were just complex:
a mix of all the attributes I gave you,
plus those you had yourself. Oh, it was sex
and mystery and beauty; also, quiet
and shyness, inability to say
what drove, or did not drive you. Now a riot
of teasing contradictions, who would play
games I would have no clue to; next a clinging
girl who adored, and didn’t know what to do.
A nun at prayer, but then a siren singing.
I’d look; I’d stare. All, all of them were you:
that host; that precious horde I had to see to;
that magic chest I could not find the key to!


Bruce Bennett is author of nine poetry books and more than twenty poetry chapbooks. The above sonnet will appear in A Girl Like You, his sonnet sequence to be published by Finishing Line Press in September this year.

Pat Jones
Published 30 May 2011