ManicDDaily

 Song of a Wandering Gustafson

I walked out to a corporate wood
because a fire was in my head
and cut my gathers from my skirts
and lined their darks with pin-stripe thread,
and when white moths were on the wing–
by that I mean some flits of art–
bad enough to be a she–
and not, as well, an odd man out–

But soon I lay me on the floor,
the fire blown to full-haired flame
by need’s hot rustle with what-for
as other needs called out my name,
and what had seemed a glimmering girl,
if not with apple-blossomed hair
(nor cherry lips nor beauty fair),
called herself my name and ran
and faded through the track-lit air

Though I’ve grown old with wandering
through dollared lands and billing lands,
I will find out where I have gone,
take back my lips, take back my hands,
and browse among long dog-eared tomes
and write my own and write my own
beneath a moon as bright as bone
beneath a sun as white as bone.

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This is very much a draft poem for my own prompt on Real Toads to take inspiration from another poem.  I really did not mean those doing the prompt to be so imitative, though mine is –my source poem The Song of the Wandering Aengus by Yeats.  (I’d like to have made it more lyrical, but well, this is what came out.)  The painting is mine.  All rights reserved.