This has long been on my wall and everytime I glance up an see it on my bulliton board I recite it to my self.
"Some white academy of grace
Taught her to dance in perfect ways:
Neck , locked as lilly, is not wan
On this great, undulating bird.
Are they indeed your soul, those,
As frantic as lace in a wind,
Forever unable to fly
Frome the beauty of you body?
Andif they dance, your five white fawns,
Walking lawns of your spoken word,
What may I do but linger
My eyes on each luminous bone?
Your hands are musci, and phrases
Escape ypur fingers as they move,
And make the unmappable lands
Quiet orchestra of your limbs.
For I have seen your hands in fields,
And I called them flutted flowers
Such as the lily is, before
It unleashes its starwhite life:
I have seen your fingernail
Cut the sky
And called it the new moon.
Her iron beats
the smell of bread
from damp linen:
silver, crystal
and warm white things.
Whatever bird
I used to be,
hawk or lapwing, tern, or something fierce and shy--
these birds are dead.
I come here
on tired wings.
Odours of bread...
Midori Snyder is the author of nine books for children and adults, published in English, French, Dutch, and Italian. She won the Mythopoeic Award for The Innamorati, a novel inspired by early Roman myth and the Italian "Commedia dell'Arte" tradition....
