When A Bayou Loves a Great Lake (Poem)

The sun, drops low in the sky, and spreads like

a balm of dripping honeyed light, twirling a lover's dance with the violet shadows of the coming twilight.

And many will find their rest, and seek their dens,

with eyes not yet adjusted to the shade and umbra,

they seek the safer shelters because they are impotent in the eventide half light.

But you and I would know these deep places,

this fresh bed of moss,

like we had made of it a nest,

like we know the crevices of each other's flesh,

the caves and peaks of bare skin,

a landscape of ecstasy,

that breathes in and out a rhapsody of our own love,

like a birdsong sung in the dim crepuscule.

We fools who wake to worship the moon with deep breaths and lips on thighs,

and shoulders,

and the soft places behind the knees and elbows.

Fingers entwined we sing,

this marriage of voodoo and haint blue eyes.

And the velvet green beneath us smells of honeysuckle,

where somewhere a whippoorwill on a lofty beam,

croons his melody in a high sweet note.

And the loons call out their otherworldly refrain,

like a chorus from behind the veil of Hade's kingdom.

And the heron dips his wings along the water's edge,

the deep dark blue of a great northern lake,

as the fins of the fish play percussion along the water's surface,

while the catfish strum the strings of their wily faces and the old bullfrog plucks a fiddle made of bones,

somewhere out in the swamp.

as a constellation of fireflies illuminates the darkening forest bed beneath the ancient trees in a soft light.

And the soft Spanish moss is draped over our bodies,

curves entangled,

under a coverlet of dark green,

and the breeze echoes with the scent of jasmine and magnolia,

as the gentle water licks at bare feet.

This,

a rhapsody,

of a bayou who married a great lake.

bvk, 2020.