Stream of Song

She holds her longing like a stream of song,

her melody a body torn

over long-worn borders

of the right and the wrong.

Crouched deep in the marshes,

he stalks the land where she flows,

for his mournful desire orders his feet

follow wherever she goes.

He says she takes the form of a dream,

or the dream of a form,

as her scorn pulses strong

like a stream full of thorns.

‘Adorn me’ he begged her,

‘make me a crown from those thorns.'

‘Shed your mourning’ said she,

‘and I’ll crown you at dawn’.

So, on the margins of melody they meet,

under the beating heat of a storm,

where he caresses the banks of her form

turning thorny water to crushed berries

as red as the sky of the dawn.

‘Drink me’ said she, ‘let the fruit be your crown’,

‘I can’t’ said he, ‘for if I sink

my mouth down to taste you

I fear I would drown’.

He undresses, she floods;

berries stream from their outlines

through the borders of blood,

marking the page of their story,

with an etching of mud.

They were a moment in time,

a mud-hut built from the sweetness of song,

but the berries have rotted

and the stream is long gone.

The girl dreams a form of a dream,

or forms a dream of a form:

the boundaries of song in the night

undressed as a stream in the dawn.