She is sleeping—collapsed on her front, pillow-nestled head turned rightward at me; her naked back, with every beautiful breath in and out, rhythmically rising and falling....
A voyaging barque braves the midnight sea, prow dashing perilous waves with resolve. Below deck, loaded hammocks, filled bunks and filled berths, and occupied cabins stir. Above, the busy watch half-mindedly attend to this and that in the forbidding dark. One gapes in horror and disbelief at the Lady in White as she mouths something soundlessly and mournfully before throwing herself over the gunwale....
And her flaxen hair—tamed Medusan locks, winding like rivulets hidden deep within magical, forgotten forests—is made lustrous by the morning sun shining through the open casement window. In comes a breeze with a scent of the not-so-distant sea, mingling with the remaining intoxication of her fragrance....
The oaken hall is decked with fire and lit by its primal light. Here itinerant rogues and knights-errant come and go, some leaving their mark on this festive world of carnival mirth, others passing on with little more than silence as their word. Bards from the murkiest recesses of far-off lands recount tales tall and true. And the gypsy women dancing and gyrating like that warming fire; bodies painted in turquoise and jade, in glyphs and tribal tattoos....
With my keen, wandering eyes I run along the smoothness and corporeality of her skin. Her frame engenders a curious wonderment: its contour; its essence as the shell encasing an enigma, containing nebular machinery. The serenity settled on her quieted face—a lively conduit heretofore—belies the structure and interlacement within wrought by æons. My hand shifts momentarily; fingers eager to stroke her heavy drapery lids, to lift the infinite veil....
Here in this glen I have come to die. Amongst rock and root, and the verdancy, I will wait for my skin to wither and cake with ageless time. The moon will regale me with eternity in her nightly flourish; the sun will caress and bestow glimpses of my origin and terminal repose. The sage earth will tell me the secrets I long ago forgot whilst I watch my blood seep out of my cumbersome body, draining into the ground: a draught as summative recompense. And finally, when I am but bone and sinew, near the banks of a river that streams my ebbing life I shall lie atop a bed of moss, the warm air blanketing me. No more than this; all to let slip....
She stirs—an ever so simple thing, of hers alone.... I rouse her, and rekindle the dream.
M.M. — Aprilis, September MMX; Februarius-Martius MMXI
