Under the stunted oak I waited for her
the Green Lady
clothed in the black of the mystified, the lost,
but more truly, naked and unshriven, seeking a dying moment.
Under my tongue, the bitter mint
above my head, invisible leaves,
known only for the moonlight they intercept
below my back, the green grass that saw me through my youth.
She came to me in a spirograph body
wings twined with ivy in curliqued ringlets
her fingers the thorns of roses pointed with the blood of the unworthy
the edges of her smile reaching up to the stars, her teeth, barbed spikes
I had not expected fear, but terror came with her
and tho I sought a dying moment, she showed me a dying eternity
and tho I sought to bring wisdom into the real, she tore the real from me
and I was no more, and in unbeing, I lost my fear
She made me into a mist, expanding slowly until I was all
everywhere, blown by the wind of her breath
into eddies and whorls within myself
and it was I that her wings beat, to keep her aloft
She flew in me, acrobatically spinning and turning
casting off parts of myself in colors I have never seen
I flowed across her wings, she breathed me
and I flowed through her grasslike hair
Soon, oh, too soon,
boundries encircled me and I contracted, condensed
and rained myself on the stunted oak, and dripped from it in rivulets
and froze beneath it into this mortal body, clothed in black of the still
mystified, but no longer lost.
© 2001 Lizard
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