On that first day,
a dreary-skied dawn, it was you who
woke me: valley fresh with mist-pure breath,
skin coppered heavier than autumn falls, hair both
eucalyptic and sweet-sharp tinged with green
apple scent - goring the air just as pitchforks
splay black, fleeting on the wind - matching
mine in colour, depth, texture, you noted;
naturally, I began to dream that you dreamt
we fit, secretly. Until the hike - when you tangled,
as bramble, or sweetbriar? on camp berry nails
that capped the gentle fingers of some boy, him
drawn to your crest - he was taming your silken
skein, flying feral as we trekked. You twined
together, his white slither through your darkness;
so across your russet shoulder he swept, claiming
you kept. So I looked away, to rocks, gunk on
the trail, moss scaling the bark of beeches, guards
against the bluff about which we wound. I was
beholden to the gnats, whom I could blame for
the bites that prickled my skin, inducing tearing
as I scratched my limbs, my face, to the point
of stinging my eyes wet - bites vexing us all alike.
But what quaked my lips through sun-fall (inscrutably,
as the sting had left us all), I never would say.
YOU ARE READING
The Life Show
PoetryPoetry I write on whimsy - some of it will make sense, probably most of it won't.