Naked poetry

As I encroached the morning mere, a lonely pock on its pristine shore, I espied a damsel knelt naked at the water’s edge, beneath heaven’s reproach

She had yet to notice my presence and I was disinclined to disturb her respite, howbeit I could not avert my marvel

She beguiled me with every move, envincing ballads in elegantly folded hands resting upon her lap and elegies with the downward cast of her tilted gaze

With a cinquain, she reached for the gold, cordate lavaliere that adorned her gracile neck, detaching it with utmost fluency

Hinged delicately at its tip, she opened fully an obcordate half, though what was held within the periapt, I knew not

A miniature hourglass simulacra when opened, flowed not with sabulous moments, but salinity she fed in its stead; then a lacrimosa that only streamed widdershins, betrayed the inscape of her torment

And I found myself reifying the sorrow as it obscured her visage, shedding my own time with hers

She had a threnody where her heart should be, and I was appetent to tear her limn from limn

But at once she stood in an enjambment of grace, her bistred sonnets waved with the lamentous wind, her satin, laced gown rippled in obeisant verse

Then a faint, determined plash in the water nigh, ere she turned empty-handed; and with the zephyr fared to the circumjacent wood, sans a backward glance

She was poetry, naked for the world to read, and reperfused my wizened heart

art: Figurative portrait of backlit woman by Daniel Gerhartz

Advertisement