BY: Dick Bentley

CAPTIVITY

I was welcomed here.
This room, clear, golden
And dark as a medieval chamber,
Is love on an autumn night.
The fresh perfume of some lotion,
The dark hair and pale and
Hardly visible face,
And the lace of reflected street lamps
Across the ceiling
Scored by window frames
And the folds of curtains.The perfect unburdening of disappointment
Into tenderness.
The perfect response
Of one body answering the other,
And the slow journey
Toward that captivation of our senses,
Into that country
Whose mountains seem alien and overwhelming
Tinted peach at sunset
Vast presences seen and unseen.
And then,
Sweet sleep.

Dick Bentley’s books, Post-Freudian Dreaming, A General Theory of Desire, and All Rise are available on Amazon. He won the Paris Writers/Paris Review’s International Fiction Award and has published over 260 works of fiction, poetry, and memoir in the US, the UK, France, Canada, and Brazil. He served on the Board of the Modern Poetry Association and has taught at the University of Massachusetts. Check his website,   www.dickbentley.com.