Drink deeply from summer's cup
and drown laughing in yellow dandelions –
This is the first and greatest commandment.
Suffer gladly through your step-stone lessons,
through the falling backs and the letting goes,
creep cheerfully in the cold almost-dawns
for your taste of sun-drunkenness.
For in the frost that follows
is the metallic taste of cold.
Hands grow lines where palms grow short,
silver crowns regal heads where once was gold,
and in every musky corner hovers the shadow lover,
smiling coyly; asking you, Is it not time
to come to my perfumed bed?
This is the note you hear. Drink.
Only in such inebriation is the light so sweet,
the grass so fragrant.
YOU ARE READING
Excavations
PoetryOld poems and older poems. The art in here is far more recent - all illustration tiles were made between April 20, 2024 and May 12, 2024. Some of these poems were published in a chapbook, Eleusinian Mysteries, in 1995, under the pen name Sarah Maddo...