As I Roved Out

As I Roved Out

As I Roved Out

I embraced the summer dawn. All was still before
the palaces, their waters dead forevermore.
 
Shade after shadow lingered on the woodland road.
I woke quick, live, warm clouds of breath as on I strode.
 
Gemstones eyed my passing. Wings arose without sound.
My first adventure happened on a path I found
 
already littered with pale glints, wherein a flower
spoke her name to me. I blinked. It was no known hour.
 
I laughed to see the Wasserfall dishevelling itself
in shocks among the pines; climbing shelf by rocky shelf,
 
I recognized the goddess at the silvered peak.
Voilà! Veil after veil I lifted from her, not to speak
 
Of how my arms were fluttering as I did so.
I did it in the lane. And boldly did I go
 
across the plain where I betrayed her to the cock.
She fled to the city under the steeple clock,
 
and beggar-like I tailed her on the marble quays.
Far up the road, beneath a grove of laurel trees,
 
I wound her in those recollected veils, and realized,
just a little, something of her massive shape and size.
 
Then dawn and child, finding themselves in the wood,
sank deep down into it. On waking it was noon.