Summer of Our Discontent

She is bronze, no not the color.
The age, the age of bronze, more advanced than stone,
needles and fishing baskets and barley and survival,
and less so than iron,
steel tools and sharp edges and brittle armor and violence.
The curve of her spine,
that indent where the sweat pooled when she lay there, prone,
summertime, the sleek, sweet saltiness of her flesh,
contrasting with the advanced synthetic scraps
which kept her from being arrested on charges of public nudity.
That was bronze.
And I loved her, loved my bronze age girl,
with her pinniped roughness made to cut through waves with minimal resistance to touch,
occasional brush of my arm, hairs erecting as they come near her,
electric hungry for congress.
She is bronze, melting copper, beautiful tooled leather and horses pulling rudimentary ploughs,
settlements, overseas trade in the hot Aegean sun, bronze.
Bent over her drawing table, rulers, pencils, t-squares and protractors at hand,
all simple tools, or weapons, depending on how you looked at them,
smudges of charcoal and cray-pas on her cheekbones and brow, entranced.
She is that in-between age which is all things possible, 360 degrees available,
no roads shut and she takes an eraser and removes a fractured line which is me.
She is bronze
and now, I am invisible