The Platonist Sees Snakes at an Ideal Moment
Thin as April then and leafed to please,
slow budding platonist, desirer of realms
bluer and less shadowy than these,
I met a memoir girl by music streams
fluting their phantom water at our feet.
We waded in, like plumage, to our knees,
sat on a rock as if we sat on eggs
when I became a rising realist.
Crooked lightning through a cloud of blood
lit up the faded garden I believed.
A moccasin was hissing as it slid,
a cougar burned behind the crochet leaves-
and green excuses for my purity
dangled, snake-entangled, from a tree.
Structure
14 lines · 1 stanza