This is a poem of incipient sexuality where I speak of it blooming like Spring in the Virginia countryside of my youth, as "wildflowers and flesh" seek their confluent emergence. This emergence is of an intensity that catches one off-guard, and I think can be compared to the intensity of a religious or sacral rite. Yet, it bears a kind of self-deception if you will, for outside the incidents of sexual exploration we never mention such things to excluded friends, or even family members. In "the exquisite fields / a Virginia sun played", I picture our absconding in meadows well hidden from our homes as we explored each other's bodies. For the Virginia sun was as a ubiquitous and timeless god, making me wonder in retrospect if it somehow colluded with nature to evoke the expression of emergent sexuality, a primal situation allegorized by the biblical Eden.

Jeffrey C Alfier
Bonfire contributor