The good women adored the way that he adored
the suggestive aromas of used literature
and the way that he absorbed (as if by osmosis) all of its sophistication
while he slowly puffed at his fat cigars (as if to excrete what he didn’t want to know).

They couldn’t help but fantasize
about swimming among his sweet chestnut curls
and later sleeping just between his fragile lips,
which always seemed to whisper love poems ever so clandestinely.

His eyes spoke of Spanish cobblestone alleyways
and romantic picnics in his ambrosial strawberry fields…
but whenever he blinked, he held them all in suspense
until he carefully lifted his eyelids once more.

His solicitous limbs hung where they pleased
but they were always pleasing
all the way down to his tender fingertips
that plucked the strings of his invisible ukulele

while his silent music floated around
and tickled all the good women’s souls.