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Even Though
by Peter Shefler

 
Even though I was hoping
for the monsoon rains, your periwinkle twilight
struck me in such
a different way
than the thunderstorms  -  lightning
out on the edges
of a long journey  -  falling on new-sown fields.
 
Mine was jagged and bright,
argent on a dark field,
calling the old sky-gods down.
 
Yours was tender
and new, opal
on purest white
rising on morning’s mist,
and gilding Aurora’s crown.
 
And in the dew-spilled heath,
I saw your flowers fair, yet
unredeemed, one
after another
they bloomed
all the way to the dark western horizon  -
and it seemed that someone saw you
there, deep and still
beneath
Orion’s starlit lair.
 
And sulphur were your wings,
and the trilling meadowlarks  -
they untwined your knitted golden hair  -
earthshine lit your undersides,
and the moon shone fallow on the strand  -
and in this new
landscape, still
unmarked  -  I had not yet
found songs to sing to you  -
had not yet unwound the thread  -
had not
yet unburdened all the ships
that waited for the flooding tides  -
but slept
and dreamed instead.
 
Stay
here
slowly for a moment  -
surely you know I cannot catch you; would not
even dare or want
to try  -  for you
always seek
the healing gentian; sip
the nectar of the sweetest sages  -
have eyes of greenest oceans  - and pray know
no more
or less than I,
of all the times
you have slipped so endlessly away.
 
The sky is quiet now  -
I lie in silence
beneath the long bent
and moistened grasses  -
you are gone now too, or so
they told me  -
but I remember when I was
just a seed, and held everything
I needed
right inside me, just waiting
to unfold  -
I remember it perfectly
so,
even though you never let me
hold you  -
even though
I never met you  -
even though the monsoon rains
never came  -  even though I was hoping  -
how can I now
in any way forget  you.


Butterfly by Leslie Morley


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