Friday, September 21, 2007

By the Reeded Shore

of mosquitoes and sun
bitten
burned
he walks
watching
coming quietly by
her voice and her listening
awash in his eyes
breathing the fringes
of her garden

brown in her shadows
and in her roots
the wooded sylphs flick her hair
and its combs tease the air
around his ears

he climbs the hummocks
of Cassiope bells
and kneels at her knees
clutching the thin bristles
brushes
cones
bedding

he is the pine flower
in her small but roomy corner
among the drifting pollens
and her vague lure
he holds his feelings
with myths in his hands
and gives her broken strands
alive and crooked
to lay into her leaves



Avocet, 1999