Her large brown eyes are like limpid pools
In which clouds of sienna silt rise disturbed
By some secret current bent on masking transparency

Her hair cropped short
Never to rest on her graceful shoulders
Nor wrap her long naked neck in warmth mink-like

She is a dancer of repute and dramatic stature
Leaping running bounding
Deliberate in every twitch of her muscular legs

See her in the forest glen shaming the sun to hide
Dappled through the verdant canopy
Shadows garb her in a mysterious grey gown

Hush and you can hear her breathing
Deeper draughts of air now after her dance
Marvel at her senses piqued to the point of perfection

My heart pleads to take her in
Her perfumed scent in concert with the woody humus
An harmonious fanfare that stirs the joints

Be not restless else she favours your eagerness
With a coy toss of her head and a leap skyward
Into invisibility

Slowly slowly achingly slow I creep
Silence and I enter into a surreptitious alliance
Broken by the snap of a wayward twig

And in that moment in which the splintered wood
Cascades down to earth she is gone
The space she inhabited is nought but verdure

With a wince my soul is rent
And sorrow fills the breach like sand a crack in the rocks
A poor substitute for the taste of her on my lips

Forsaking love homeward I trudge
Until a glimpse of soft brown flits on the periphery
Stirring the fickle heart to race and swell
The hunt begins again!


Penned by my hand on the 8th of Ero, in the year 407 AF.