Poets and Storytellers United has prompted us this week to give a piece related to the “firsts” or “lasts”. Here is my offering.
The Fall
How can I describe how I felt
When first I was with you?
Think of a desert traveller’s
First thirsty gulps of water
At the well of the oasis.
Think of the first spring flower
After a long hard winter;
The bright, gold, glorious morning
That follows a storm raging all night long;
The island green and gold
In an exhausted castaway’s eyes
Amid the endless sea.
Think of the way a seedling feels
When first it breaks through
The cold, dark earth.
Think of the tears the deaf man shed
When first he heard a song
With new-found hearing
And the heart that snapped with joy
When the blind man
Saw the rainbow for the first time.
This was how I felt
When first I was with you
And all this was my trembling flesh
Trying to tell you
When your cool fingers
You first extended in a light caress.
Ah! Then the birds sang to the wind
And the sun teased the waves,
As the froth amused itself
On the shifting sand.
The rosy collared seashell’s lips
Curled upward, inward
In ever diminishing microcosms
Becoming filled with more and more detail.
We spun on sand,
While seahorse galloped in the depths
And sea and sky vied to be more than blue:
Azure, ultramarine
Deep peacock smalt, cerulean,
Aquamarine, blue-green and verdigris.
The sun, he whipped us with his lash relentlessly
Each blow resounding as if on cymbal struck,
And on we spun, floated ever on,
Expanded filled our universe
Merged with the infinite
All in a seashell on a sandy shore.
And then,
I fell.
Forever seemingly,
In black abyss,
Accurséd Tartarus.
And then I fell,
And then I woke,
Clutching your fleeting shadow
In a sweat-drenched sheet.
