black woods, with your permission.

read deeply

 

 

 

   I was a minstrel in a former life. Part song, part evergreen.

   Always in black-face. Nothing got between me and the sea

   but the behavior of the harp and the mint, night air of

   moon slang.

 

   As a tree I could stand still as a monument, my old bark faugh

   with long suffering and air.

   But as a song, I could engineer the privelege of citizens, so endowed,

   and bring them scurring to the square.

 

   Of course this is all fantasy. Trees and songs, however the artful schemer-

   plotter of ritual, engender of a north wind, don't go together.

   Not in trined song. Not in the crinkle of pretend.

   Not in the red flounce of adorable dresses.

 

   Tell me please, what is fantasy anyway? What is it if you cant

   breathe in the summer particulate of oak trees or if you cant

   recognize the voice, however tender, of an old friend

   coming from a room you never visited?

 

   Trees and songs mean I have visited all the rooms of the river.

   So, it would be criminal to stand on the blue ledge without daring(?)

   Did I mention that I was a minstrel in a former life?

   Grown men found me singing lequiscent songs of forgone lovers

   left on the shore;

 

   broken poem-maker. Renascent to the rising root of danger. 

   Sepulcher of my thin leaves, the sweet trill of tear droplets.

   The alter of home.

Reviews

[sienikeha]

"I was a minstrel in a former life. Part song, part evergreen."
"crinkle of pretend"
"red flounce of adorable dresses"
"Trees and songs mean I have visited all the rooms of the river"....

gorgeous!!!

fdbk:
* "What is it if you cant breath(e)..."
* lequisent? --> liquescent ?
* Renascent?

[Emily B]

still breathing it deeply in . . . will be back to serenade the words another day