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PARABLE OF THE BELOVED, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I asked her to bring something
Subject(s): Absence; Love; Separation; Isolation


I asked her to bring something
to put beneath my pillow;
instead, she mailed this note
on her way to India and the Middle East.
"Sorry you miss seeing me
and maybe I'll return."
During the two years I raced
across the sea to touch her hand
and then she came to visit me,
I grew to appreciate her style.

When home, I keep the door unlocked,
the music low and full of candlelight and stars,
for she is known to surprise.
Morning, noon, or night, the windows
are open, unless a storm, not of her creation,
batters door and window to be let in.

I still dream of smelling her skin,
kisses that taste like pears,
the moment the sheets ignited
and she buried her pupils in mine,
to the core of my soul.
I can even live with the barbs
in her words when she teased
like a dancer from the Moulin Rouge.
"If I ever leave you,
you'll hear the wind ruffle your hair
like a flock of crows, the moon
turn as cold and remote
as the blue-lipped iris. The chill
will cure the thorny absence
pounding your heart to canoe chips."
Her voice would then switch keys
to French or Italian.
"Trust me a little while;
I'm your Daphne and daughter,
beloved from the banks of the River Seine,
dream sprite from the Fontainebleau forests.
I may be back to marry you
to the earth with my fingers
a fan of leaves, my lips a garland of petals,
and whether I show or not,
remember I made your bed
my canoe on the River Tiber.
O, you didn't just dream Roma
was your birthplace in an earlier life.
Trust me, cedar man, life's
more than the currents
between two blood magnets."


Copyright © Duane Niatum.
http://www.unl.edu/schooner/psmain.htm
Prairie Schooner is a literary quarterly published since 1927 which
publishes original stories, poetry, essays, and reviews. Regularly cited in the
prize journals, the magazine is considered one of the most prestigious of the
campus-based literary journals.






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