Monday, April 26, 2010

Running to stand still

This is for yesterday's Brewer prompt: a poem inspired by a song. I'm not happy with it, but I rather like where it's going.

From the Wolfhound’s Companion
“and I said that we might settle down, get a few acres dug…”
--Richard Thompson, “Beeswing”

Together, we tasted like grass, new-mown,
a hint of wild onions. We grew in the earth we lay upon,
under the rough army blanket, stars in our hair.
He was a ginger, with the face of an eternal boy.
Our children would go off with Peter Pan—
but they would come back, take that bespoke suit
and the mortgage, bury themselves in Bank Street.
I could see how his green eyes sparked
when he recalled Comp Lit, the hesitation in his hands
when picking up the quail I caught for supper.
He could not bear blood—and he would never be
the one who spread his legs for his pretty heirs.
He was not meant for this place, and what
he tasted in me was what he wanted to taste:
that curry-combed show-wife, bound in pink ribbons,
fine as a bee’s wing.

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