Animus

Sometimes, in a face I see you--
young men hurried away by their tasks
or striding through the crowd in pairs,
so tall, so straight,
too fresh and vivid for me to catch their eyes.
You flit across those eyes,
through the muscles of their cheeks,
caught a moment too long in the pools of their dimples;
you echo in their laughs
too fast, too fast for me to catch.
How many of us are left behind you,
unable, unworthy to touch?
How many of us will never know
what it is like to possess perfection?
For even the young men do not know you:
we have no knowledge of our beauty
until it has left us far, far behind.