IN A MOMENT
by: Joseph T. Shipley
- LEAP, flash
of my body over the water's dark,
- Splash, and before her startled senses wake
- To action, I am there!
-
- She stands unconscious of her nudity.
- Two needle-flies, joined and vibrating like a living harp,
- Spun round her in their passion.
- One was green-black, and one a vivid blue.
- She watched them idly, while the water lapped--
- Oh, so tenderly, not to alarm her--
- Avidly at the cream-round of her thighs.
- Then she turned idly, floating.
- There is no human sight more fair
- Than was her slender form; she lay
- Like a kiss upon the water, and the sun
- Lighted her face, and danced upon her breasts
- As fairies dance on soft rose-petals strewn
- For their queen's wedding day.
- It was our bridal that the sun proclaimed.
-
- Did the envious wind whisper warning?
- Did that scurry of wild ducks to the farther shore
- Startle her? She is no more a nymph
- That dreams, adrift to nowhere, in a time
- When water and wind and sun were sheltering gods;
- She is no more incarnate heedless beauty
- But a huddled timorous maiden I adore.
- She stands, all-conscious of her nudity,
- Shrunk for concealment, poised for flight.
- Now--Now--I must leap!
"In a Moment" is reprinted
from Poetica Erotica. Ed. T.R. Smith. New York: Crown
Publishers, 1921. |
MORE
POEMS BY JOSEPH T. SHIPLEY |
|