God of Reprieve and Other Small Miracles
          Let her finish her dance,
          Let her finish her dance.
          Ah dancer, ah, sweet dancer!
                                         —Yeats

You can see her from the lake.
Maybe drawn in her sundress. Touch her.
You'll not want to be sorry for missing this.

Look. Smoke rises early from the huts
like the light backwash of comets, whitish, bluestained.
Say something to her. Say anything at all.

So, just whose still unravished bride is this?
I'm grinding rhino horn into my pocket for courage.
How it hurts, what morning wants, you think,
thinking it's morning that wants anything at all.
Yet, were there hills, yea verily they'd skip like rams, no?

No? Don't argue. Maybe the dawn skips like rams,
maybe it is all yours, after all. All of it.
Be a little smug. What does it matter who knows?

Go on! It's me, begging myself.
It's me, hunting for the keys, uprooting the honey pot.
It's me, touched by the gold hand of having nothing gold.

It's me, hatched under the unborn wing of morning, son
of the orphan wing of night.
Here in our wilderness,
bathed here in our light and lake,
such sad monkeys.

Copyright © 2005 Jeffrey Levine All rights reserved
from Rumor of Cortez
Red Hen Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission