Morning Glory Tea

Never again,
Paul promised himself,
will I ever mix
Morning Glory Tea
and acid.

Not a bad trip,
but deep,
deep as only Rose could take him
and only Rose could bring him back.

She'd dragged him sleepy still
through the last gray minutes of night
up to the top of the old colonial watchtower.
She tucked a tiny paper square under his tongue
and they watched the wash
of the red end of the spectrum
as the sun began its climb.
They drank bitter, dizzying tea and
traded koans and non sequiturs
back and forth with the tiny steel cup.

Rose grew restless
and hauled Paul to his feet
and down into the tangled yarn ball,
the streets and alleys of Edgemere
still tossing pointed questions over her shoulder,

Her follow-the-leader game
wound through the cramped corridors
of secondhand stores and sandwich shops
where black iron pipes hung from the ceiling
chattered with flowing water
carrying rumors to the sea.

Then they were dashing across rooftops
and all of Paul's senses blended
he ran his hand along the texture of her questions,
all silk and gravel and polished steel;
savored the crushed spices of her songs;
now nutmeg; now curry; now oregano.

Rose wrenched open a door
and they pounded down endless stairs,
willing their feet to keep up with
their flying, gyreing bodies
until abrupt level flatness shocked their knees
and spilled them into the street.

Paul began to flash back,
his mind replaying the morning
so Rose hauled him again to his feet
and retraced their path,
this time with her reciting poems;
torches and tygers burning bright
and something about walls.

Then they did it again;
this time Rose revealed and
disappeared small objects;
a peripatetic magic act
winding through the city.

Each instance of their journeys
overlapped in Paul's mind
and he watched, enthralled,
as multiple Roses,
invisible to each other,
synchronized uncannily,
like a record album and an old movie;
the needle placed at the lion's third roar.

It became too much for him; too many.
She brought him to her place
and lowered the blinds
and he pawed through her playlists and discs
and played hours of gentle music
in the cool dimness of her living room;
cuddled with her on the couch
tracing spirals with his fingertips
on her forearms and cheekbones
and the along the soft pulse of her neck.

“Have you ever gone so deep,”
he asked that evening when he noticed
the trickle of reality reasserting itself,
“ever gone so deep that you had to have
someone guide you back?”

“I have,”
she replied, nipping the hinge of his jaw,
“and thank you,” she murmured,
“for guiding me back.”