“The fallow deer keep / Delicate and far their counsels wild, / Never to be folded reconciled”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday:


Not the Song, but After, Nicholas Friedman

Now everywhere the pageantry of youth
        is on display:
The squeal of bike chains spinning through the gray
        plays fugue to puddle-froth;

The punctual blitz of hyacinths in April
        ushers spring
with lavender dripped from the upturned wing
        of wind-swept Gabriel.

A youngish pair walks wired at the arms—
        she casually ribbing
him, he lightly brushing her breast, jibbing
        their step to spare the worms

stranded along the road. Too soon, their laughter
        rises and goes
drifting toward silence. And now the young man knows
        love’s not the song, but after—

like the mute, remembered chorus of the rain
        that stains the walk
long after falling, or the lifeless stalk
        still hoisting its head of grain.

Uneasy now, she loosens from his hand.
        Their dark familiars
stare back, reflected by the passing cars,
        with speechless reprimand.

Before the chill, each chartered hell grows hotter,
        yet every burn
will teach him how to run—and how to turn
        her wine back into water.


---L.

Subject quote from Deer, John Drinkwater.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Just occasionally someone reminds me why I write poetry! :o)

Both the poem and the quote from John Drinkwater.

[thistleingrey]

...that final stanza, though....

[larryhammer]

I’m not sure what to make of the last two lines myself.

[thistleingrey]

Something something undoing of love or lust figured as intoxication?

[larryhammer]

Something like that? maybe?