2/22/2002

The stepping stone
has reappeared.
Snow melt makes a
perfect lake with

walls of sheer cut
gray. Happy the
small white stones, three,
islands now; still

world ringed by bright
green; grass, tiny
leaves dividing
bricks, a bitten

root. Fierce the face
of evergreen,
dandelion, thyme.
Green stays, is, live.

 

 

Pine

 

Last night I dreamed I was kissing
a boy I knew slightly
years ago. It was a sweet kiss,
our bodies pressed
together with longing I could feel,
even as I woke to a wet
morning and forty-seven years
passed. I thought about him
as I brushed my teeth, an old boyfriend's
best friend, the younger, smaller
brother of a boy I had once longed for,
whose handsome face
and athletic body were somehow not
quite expressed in the second
version--and this was the one I kissed--
was I young in the dream? He seemed
to want to care for me, put me
to bed in a screened room up high,
in a building that may have been
a college dormitory. How sweet the air,
fragrant with crickets, how sweet the sleep,
knowing his longing for me
just beyond the unlocked door. 

 

--Kelley White

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