The Jig Is Up
When Irish eyes are smiling,
And the gymnast smile extends to curve her petal-red lips,
That's when she'll let her waves fall down with the grace of
a faerie.
If in a wheat field the sheathes would glow ember's
orange,
And the stalks rippled hypnotically in the air's current,
Under the sparkling current then you'd know,
Sunna was making things in her own image,
And that Freyr sent my love.
She came to the North --
Well, going east really -- to train dogs,
But instead she found this puppy.
This lost puppy with this transmutable, caravanical home.
And he rolled onto his back and pouted and stuck out his
tongue,
Although she had not come North looking for love.
The gadje girl couldn't find a caravan with open doors, but
it was okay
Because she housed the puppy in this chamber.
She'd been using the space, but she was sure the puppy
wouldn't encroach
On that vital process.
I had long hair but hers was longer,
Especially when she'd release the current to drift warmly
through my belly.
That petal-red, crescented acrobat would swing lazily
through the air,
And slowly bring her arc briefly tangential to my own, easy
fool's smile.
I'd trail my finger across her milky surface,
Tracing declarations I hoped would not simply ripple out
to rejoin the glassy surface.
Someday.
My trailings would sometimes provoke a peal of laughter,
My professions mistaken for a frog or a fish
Unnoticed until the water plinks at its reentry.
Dark black Faerie had followed her to Finland.
But it did not try to tempt me with its own bruise-like
stain,
Nor would it taint ribbons of rot through the wheat
sheathes.
It took on her guise and sunny disposition, unnaturally,
And to this hazy realm I found myself drawn.
It was a summer season and I,
Surrounded by sun near the top of the world,
Craved to be in sunspot's queer shadow.
But the heavenly sun moved on in her orbit and my
earthly sun neared again,
And I noticed the cracked guise of Faerie could not
illuminate my nights.
The pale moon-reflection grew paler with strife.
Sunbeam's full-blooded heart closes around something
and feels constricted.
Her puppy has become parasitic and clots her chamber
now.
He punches through walls because he knows
The jig is up, but footwork won't work now that he's
worked up.
She'll see me and beam upon me for a moment,
A blinding, binding, tortuous moment.
The North is pretty desolate this time of year.
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