Pinocchio’s evolution
The painted face did not
turn to flesh overnight.
The morning light failed to strike
a sensual, spinal cord revolution
along the red velvet of his leather suitcase.
The strings where still there, when,
behind a knot of wood
his heart began to beat.
It started with the aglet of the wooden lace
painted upon the left black shoe
on the foot of his carved leg.
After an unknown interval
an entire shoelace turned real,
moved when a slight breeze
brushed an invisible shoulder
past the window and curtain.
The right eye moistened first,
saw the crease of flesh
and a single blue vein underneath.
As casual as a cat’s flicked tail,
one day, the finger nail
of his right thumb
started to grow and curl.
A strand of blue-black hair
at the back of his head stirred;
a lash of his eye fell free, fluttered,
landed upon his wooden cheek.
The right foot bent and returned,
his left hand made the first fist.
His ears filled with wax weeks
before his bottom and top lips
cracked and split
and a full year, at least,
before the tongue shyly poked between.
It was a sunny day
when he first began to think;
rained heavily the afternoon
all his wood was finally skin,
yet the tale is easier told when,
with the wave of a wand,
and a hoarse whisper of a spell,
the puppet can speak.
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for those who wih
the first is here
http://www.writingforums.com/poetry/...evolution.html
