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Poem For a Tall Woman

by Robert Priest

 


If you have ever seen the green in water that is forever flowing out to mystery and adventure then you know something of the colour of her eyes. I would not talk so foolishly but there is a space in me she steps into -- a tall shadow, an absence that howls like a grave or a dead wind when she is not there. I am a fool for her, letting all of me be a mile-long night breeze if she is but a straw held up -- a single golden hair I might rush over forever. I love Marsha Kirzner like the taste of my own spit, like my own blood in my veins, ready to melt in her heat like snow carried south and dropped in Pacific surges, my mouth dissolved in tropical mangoes and sweet papaya. She is another tall self I keep inside and lean on like a prop -- a magic self that sets me whirling and dispersing -- an anchoring self like a two-ton idol thin and heavy in the bed, me fastened to it like a small burnt lizard. Let me just hold this mantis woman in my arms, this tall beautiful fire with green eyes. Let me just lick the length of this green blade, this lightning filament of her love and I will sizzle with it, a long green furrow in my spirit where a jade lake reaches for the peaks. Her hand is a leaf that can calm the passage of a storm and yet it is a leaf that sings in its work like a reed made of Human flesh, a musical flesh of gasps and sighs -- a high sweet strand of water like a violin string. Aaaah draw the bow down again my loved one across the heart, across the soul, draw the bow down again and play forever the long sweet notes of our love.