Poem for a Nymph Asleep by a Tree
I can see you there in that Christ-haunted South
of mossy hills and church graveyards
and foggy mountain streams,
where you and your Biblical name are asleep
beneath a thin curvacious tree
with windblown hair of wild moss
which stands there like a southern goddess of Spring
benevolently offering shade
where you lie,
sleeping in the shadow of the Messiah.
The whiteness of your skin
and the gentle way you rest your head
on a pillow of fallen leaves,
it intoxicates me
combined with the lovely most potent warm breeze
which prophecies the coming of Summer.
What do you dream of?
What bright-eyed boy walks with you in your garden?
What star-crossed love is so cherished by your Shakespearean comedy-girl
yearning for that torch-bearer bringing his light to the night of your longing
aching for fate in the heart of your acting
muse to the art of your dreaming?
What do you dream of?
And oh!
your subliminal smile!
your secrets revealed in that fantasy grin!
(yet still devilishly masked by your curtain of eyelids)
Oh, how playful you look,
asleep underneath that slim innocent tree-form of a virgin goddess
peacefully resting in the flowering footstep of joyous Persephone bringing Spring
You must have been born in the seafoam white bubbling where Ocean's wet fingers reach out for the blossoms of June.
I daydream:
let's go you & I
on a rose-pedal raft up the old Mississippi
ascending away from the graveyards and Protestant hymns
we'll be baptized in May by the rain on our way
way up north, up the river where we can be free
born again in some city
up, free - you & me.
But when will you wake,
wake up to find me here
making my lists of the colors and sounds
the flowers and herbs
and the curves of your dress?
When will you wake,
wake up and walk to me
giving your slender white arms to embrace me
pressing your soft pale-pink lips against mine
to kiss with the weight of Christ on the water?
of mossy hills and church graveyards
and foggy mountain streams,
where you and your Biblical name are asleep
beneath a thin curvacious tree
with windblown hair of wild moss
which stands there like a southern goddess of Spring
benevolently offering shade
where you lie,
sleeping in the shadow of the Messiah.
The whiteness of your skin
and the gentle way you rest your head
on a pillow of fallen leaves,
it intoxicates me
combined with the lovely most potent warm breeze
which prophecies the coming of Summer.
What do you dream of?
What bright-eyed boy walks with you in your garden?
What star-crossed love is so cherished by your Shakespearean comedy-girl
yearning for that torch-bearer bringing his light to the night of your longing
aching for fate in the heart of your acting
muse to the art of your dreaming?
What do you dream of?
And oh!
your subliminal smile!
your secrets revealed in that fantasy grin!
(yet still devilishly masked by your curtain of eyelids)
Oh, how playful you look,
asleep underneath that slim innocent tree-form of a virgin goddess
peacefully resting in the flowering footstep of joyous Persephone bringing Spring
You must have been born in the seafoam white bubbling where Ocean's wet fingers reach out for the blossoms of June.
I daydream:
let's go you & I
on a rose-pedal raft up the old Mississippi
ascending away from the graveyards and Protestant hymns
we'll be baptized in May by the rain on our way
way up north, up the river where we can be free
born again in some city
up, free - you & me.
But when will you wake,
wake up to find me here
making my lists of the colors and sounds
the flowers and herbs
and the curves of your dress?
When will you wake,
wake up and walk to me
giving your slender white arms to embrace me
pressing your soft pale-pink lips against mine
to kiss with the weight of Christ on the water?