I visit you at sunset
for weeks on end, memorize
your slender neck, each movement—
slow white grace on our mud-thick lake.
Bright apparition
from the root of dusk,
you have seamed yourself
to the liquid lining of my vision,
dreamed your body into mine.
There in the space between sleep
and waking
you float—
a wild thing,
mute
and unburdened.
Some have seen you fly.
I practice silence,
grow impractical white feathers.
One day soon—
white wings.
[Refer: This poem refers to Carolee Sherwood’s poem “After We Kissed for the First Time.”]
Robin Turner is an online writing guide for homeschooled teens and an arts educator in North Texas schools, museums, and youth shelters. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Four and Twenty Poetry, Friends Journal, Red River Review, and elsewhere. She lives with her husband and a silly old yellow cat along a wooded creek in East Dallas.
Image by Bahman Farzad