First Love

That was her beginning, an apparition

of rose in the unbreathed airs of his love,

her heart revealed by the wash of summer

sprung from her childhood’s shallow stream.

Then it was that she put up her hair,

inscribed her eyes with a look of grief,

while her limbs grew as curious as coral branches,

her breast full of secrets.

But the boy, confused in his day’s desire,

was searching for herons, his fingers bathed

in the green of walnuts, or watching at night

the Great Bear spin from the maypole star.

It was then that he paused in the death of a game,

felt the hook of her hair on his swimming throat,

saw her mouth at large in the dark river

flushed like a salmon.

But he covered his face and hid his joy

in a wild-goose web of false directions,

and hunted the woods for eggs and glow-worms,

for rabbits tasteless as moss.

And she walked in fields where the crocuses

branded her feet, and mares’ tails sprang

from the prancing lake, and the salty grasses

surged round her stranded body.