Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Water Flower

Another first draft, all in a rush amid Materials and Methods (I'm at work). The title and general idea have been with me for some time. This morning, two e-mails, a dream hangover, and Soma.fm brought it together.

Water Flower
for S.T.

In my dream, your hotel had bone-white walls,
the plane trees stark against them,
the sand stilled by the baking sun. Cheb i Sabbah chanted
from some inner room, where I understood,
without being told, that the dance goes ever on.
A place remote, with music in its hidden heart,
is not where you live.

I have not seen your house, but you talk
of tinkling creeks, rising loaves of seven-grain bread,
and white blooms, mosquitoes in their orbit,
floating, tethers obscured by the rippling surface.
Nomad of sharp tongue and sharper ear,
narcissus hair and rosy cheek, I don’t know botany,
and for all that I see you in city after city,
for all that I trust your hand and ear and eye,
I don’t know the name of that water flower.

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