Dear dear world
I’m just another mud sprite
Blunt and misshapen; my edges are rough
And no amount of rubbing polishes me.
Every once in a while, when all your backs are turned
The creeping waters recede; the wind is unblocked and it
Carries me, and I am lifted,
Swirling up in a whirl of dust.
I have sisters in a nearby pond who let me
Look into them for my reflection
But I fall in to them too soon, mixed into them
Another image clouded, lost.
It seems to me there is always one
More drop of rain still falling from the sky
Yet to be received. I can wait.
I am not sure how he spotted me
Slinking as I was from hill to hill
Without any purpose but gravity, and I am still
Not sure he is ever looking at me
When he sinks into me the way he does
With a grunt and a dance. I stare
Straight into his gray eyes, and feel
Startled by how complete is his island.
He never seems so alone as then,
When he is rocking with that snarl.
He never seems so lovely.
So divine. He was laughing and virile when I first saw him
And his legs were strong and straight
And his hooves cut precise
Vee-marks, his victory,
Permanent, all over my back.
It is only with my back so flattened and my chin turned up
That I see the sky, the Love both furthest and closest to me
The air of the heavens so opposed I can never possibly reach.
It’s only then, the light dimming, that I notice Artemis,
In her fullest, most chaste splendour
Beckoning to me, begging to be like Her, like everyone,
Alone in their shining Beauty
He laughs and ignores me when I point her out reverently,
but isn’t Love to share the Beauty in one’s quietest
and most fervent prayers of gratitude,
the kinds one can only usually make in solitude?
How else can I show the things that I cannot?
Who knows where he’s running now? Why does he bother
Coming back? I need and hate for him to be free.
We do not share a bed; there is just a cove
Or two that’s been carved into me from the times we met,
with that young green moss I think he likes. I try to pleat it
decoratively in the hopes of cushioning
our briefest of trysts.
He could hurt me so deeply so readily and sometimes
I wish I could have him fall onto me, this time onto
The sharpest, most piercing rocks I can find within.
I want his blood. He hasn’t visited in a while and I am not
So sure I care, and my ears are only barely perked up
For the growing reverberations of his galloping approach.
When we are done
He sits back beside the ponds again, looking
In, just like me. And we wonder why
We do not see each other.
We are deceptive in different ways him and I:
I am part of the earth and I do not have to move
To be everywhere at once
And I can go down for miles and miles
Before I should ever have to face the feelings
At my core. He has a constant flow of arrows that
He can aim in any direction he likes, and he can travel
Faster and farther than anyone I have ever felt, and his
Skin is thin, shimmering its many lucent colours softly.
And we are proud but in a different manner too:
He has his pipes, his followings,
And the winds and waters just make sense to
Him, the tunes already played. I am stubbornly steadfast.
My curves are weighed down. I hold onto my secrets.
I can only let myself absorb him slowly, seeping despite all
Resistance into me, year after year after year,
His whisper in my ear.
And we are both tired: him of his endless energetic trot
And me in my eternal knot of grime and pebbles
And burdens, these relentless elements.
Still, he will always be my Pan
And I guess I shall ever remain faithfully,
His dirty nameless nymph.
