Untitled
Rochelle Holt
All love is an enchantment,
and makes a hero of a frog,
or an Empress of a courtesan.
- So Love Returns by Robert Nathan
It’s that one understood barely
or maybe nearly or only half-so
the tears of the mandrake,
the bloodroot of a woman
yet the knowledge was like adder
like puffweed blowing in the wind
for to reach your grasp
is to lose a soul
in the climb of the mind
up the ladder of heart
yearning to ensure a firefly
or a buttercup
in water
like a mirror or prism
that will glass-reflect
the hunger of a beggar
the thirst of a greedy ragpicker
who hides bones
in the pockets of Joseph’s liquid coat,
buries the colors
of a rainbow
in the folds
of an umbrella
found adrift in the night
like beach wood
like birds’ feathers
in the dawn.
For the truth of time
to sift through one’s veins
or to flow to the center of the heart,
we must really study
the anatomy of an anemone
or the anonymity of a crab -
walk backwards on sand
with one eye stalking tomorrow
while today washes up
frothy beneath our toes
like a shadow
like a whisper
like the promise of eternity
which is just a dream
nourished by the moon
until the sun wakes the sleeper
to unseize the mist
which “has its own life and venom”
like the fog creeps between the land
and the sea. It’s that one understood barely
or maybe nearly or only half-so,
or he or she would let go
and let the creature or illusion vanish
to reappear when it would.
A lover should not seek to fish
for a mermaid,
for love will always find
a way back or to
whatever love
would have a mind to do ...
