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Dawn Bauling

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Catching Pears

They say you are a craggy woodman
past your prime and whittled by a wind
whistling through thin limes and poplar.

You are bent, with leprous lichen markings
on a silver skin broken by years and lean
through meagre soil and harsh wintering.

Sap takes a slow coarse through veins
once vigorous, now poor as an orphan,
slow to leaf and scanty, almost bald.

But your broad shoulders hold
and the pears though hard are honeyed
like sweetmeats for those who wait.

Dripping, she will sit under you and eat,
watching the small lizards play
their lovers fingers in to your trunk

bending her spine in to the harmony
of yours, connecting enough
to know your pulse.

If she lingers, she will hear you open your cracked belt
to accept the circle of another year,
on to a bacchant waist.

Later she will sleep sugared in your shade
under an enchantment of hands.
Perhaps she will choose a dream that will let her call you

lord.

 

Page(s) 56

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