Looking Back
There’d been
A man in a boat...his limbs long and white
in the light
Of the long moon-y nights
Rowing with oars made of wood and
A strong Keel of steel ..
Calling to her from the watery splash
His voice deep and lush in a baritone lake
Romance at dawn..and sometimes at night
She, lingering ... languished
... a creature awash on the ebb
A swan on a lake
On an old Persian Rug...
Waiting and wandering
In a lonely stung life
Counting her bruises invisible wounds
The sounds of the woods
And the call of the wolves
The footsteps on clover
The spring and the bounce
Far off overhead was a sky full of stars....
Shining down on her face so painful and wan
He’d come in a flash and was gone...
And she lay.
She had tried many things ...
But each slipped away ...
From the grasp of her mind
Her efforts grew stronger
Then they became less
At the base of her dreams.
Departed ... he’d left her a gift
A chancre ....a rash on the souls of her feet
And lesions attacking her skin.
I stare at her face .. that generic skull
Wrapped in a turban, a scarf ....or a hat,
The skin heavy lids close over her eyes
Her darkened black eyes in the hollows of bone
She stifles a groan in her fever.
..The Golden Gates sink into chasms of time...
She releases small sounds escaping like moths ...
Fluttering up into space from her almost still mouth
I stare at her marble cold face.
Kristine Byrne Nov/Dec 2013