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Haiku
Free Verse
Prosies
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For Dan
Because you asked me to keep my eyes open
I can't help but see what it is like when you are there—
present
 above
me
it didn't start out with you above me
and it won't end there, I think.
It began with a fountain filled with flowers,
with the bloody hands of a king,
and his unsexed wife.
It is not finished yet. I don't even know
what the first act
really looks like—but there is a litany
of flowers and fruit: a beach plum plucked
from a ring of asphalt. Acorns.
A field of golden flowers.
Hayfields mown down to stubble,
but still wild and redolent
with the Green Man's scent.
The softness of your hair beneath my fingers,
the drip of sweat from your nose,
milking the breath right out of you.
I never
would
have thought it
outside a fountain filled with flowers
You never
would have thought it.
But we were curious in spite of ourselves
and so I've woken on this second morning
to see the mirror-glass stillness of your pond
and the sunlight slanting through it.
At night,
when the pond lies under cover of darkness,
I can feel your heart right over mine,
and know that love is a word,
another kind of open.
There is a burning that happens,
centered first in the groin,
then in the belly,
then in the gut,
and then in the heart, where you're holding me.
I know where you are open
and I know where I am shut
Because you ask me to keep my eyes open,
I can feel the shutters behind my open eyes,
there in the moment with you
and yet retreated
I wonder how long this can last
in this kind of open
and what might happen
if I were to forget myself in a whole other way
and what else might fall away.
— Frances Donovan
August, December 2003
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