Waterland

Over the watery marsh I soar
The soppy greens pull
At her velvet shirt
Streams pulse
Pent up in torrents
Unleashed, unbending,
Straps of wind in echoing cries
Her dreaming body is awake.
Tongues lilt lullabies
Flames of blue and orange
Lick and roll into the pitch night.

Tugging at surf’s edge
White seabirds lap at bubbles
the jellygreen slapping jetty
Pulses ruddy and red
Where salt brine ripples
Beneath fernfoil
Slippery fingers of stone
And veils of thin tissue
Silhouettes the flow
Like sheets blown on an early April day.

Raging, unchecked,
Pent up torrents of hurtled pieces
a world flung into gurgling surrender.
As in a dream,
An open door
I see her eyes in a painting
Hung on a fresh wall.
Waking on the new side
To enter the old day
Into a room of viewers
Who catch her stare
In the candle’s flicker flare.