ManicDDaily

Love in a Time of Thyme

She recited Prufrock as they walked a lawn
made purple by more
than twilight, each believing
that the mermaids would sing
to him (or her). Oh, they
would eat a peach, which incidentally
was the shade of her cheeks
that summer, the tenor of the bristle
garnishing his.

Not focusing either
on the fact that they talked (unstoppingly)
against a backdrop
of trout rather than mer–
(speckled, not wreathed,
in brown)–
a place where those
who’d drowned
had names like Rube that were passed
to the offending deep stream pools
and were probably drunk rather than waking
from a trance of unattempted
artistry–

But they, speaking in Prufock,
did not categorize the sodden
as tragic, and after the grass grew damp
about their ankles, moved to Burroughs–because who,
he shook his head, could beat
the Beats–then on to line and shape–how even
the Abstract Expressionists
were all washed up–

and, with the willful absorption
of the young, clung
to not being understood
and, sort of,
to each other,
purple tilting their vision even with eyes
half-open, the equinoctial light taking
to skin not used to being bared–

purple radiating
from the clouds overhead
or in their heads–
they never seemed to stoop
to what lay underfoot, not

until years later, and then
it was just her, and a peach was just
a peach and a drowned man was known
to leave at least one love behind, who, most likely
had to move to a trailer,
and the curls of mermaids
could only be traced
in limestone,
and she would reach down
to the violet clusters
that more than speckled
the green expanse, crushing one gently
to release its savory scent, and wonder
as she found it again on her fingertips
how it was all just there,
free for the taking–thyme,
thyme,
thyme.

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Here’s a sort of draft poem for Kerry O’Connor’s “In Other Words” prompt on With Real Toads to make a poem using a variation of a title from a novel designated by her, in this case Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.   My poem has nothing to do with Marquez’s book.

I could not find a photograph I had taken of thyme, which grows wild rampantly and has a beautiful little purple flower, so used this picture of a fawn taken last summer.  I am positive, knowing the lawn upon which the fawn stands, that there is a great deal of thyme beneath and around the deer’s hooves. 

Process notes–the poem has several references to “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” by T.S. Eliot.  The Burroughs mentioned is intended to be William Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch and others.   Also, note this has been edited slightly since first posting, a work in progress.  (Ha!)