Back to the Woods: A Prose-Poem

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Abstract

se, the blue-jean cling of urban fur on your lithe limbs — the sensual roll of tree-brushed hills in your gait — they say love is blind — <i>maybe lust is hallucinogenic.</i></p><p id="c02f">And I’m asking the birds if they’ve passed Eros in their flights — he’s bound to have noticed your fey nature— and we know the forests are shrinking — maybe all mythical woodland creatures are adapting to suburban sprawl — the streets, running wild at night with satyrs and fauns —</p><p id="24c5">Turn a corner — there’s Eros, leaning against a street sign, sharpening his arrows — he winks and whispers something I can’t catch — lean in closer — and there’s blood on my arm — he prophesies (to no-one in particular) —</p><p id="667b"><i>Always a little pain in the pursuit of love</i></p><p id="2d2a">I want to ask if you’re an urban myth — but he bends to rake an arrow in the dirt — opens an ancient ley line, like the power of enchanted blood from a vein — I’m smelling you in the air again as he bids me — <i>tread this line on tiptoe facing east —it leads straight into Arcadia — </i>and then — the light trembles —</p><p id="23bd"><i>I never promised you I was a reliable narrator — </i>Eros’ arrows are straight, but love is not — stories are not — not the interesting ones. I’m a heroine on a quest, questing the mythology of you — now I understand Psyche’s curiosity — to get just a glimpse.</p><p id="1760">And I’m feeling the brush of fir branches on my cheeks. Orange moon rising reveals a grassy clearing, a ring of trees — and the ring of deep laughter in the air around me, like rock-fall, like rich earth making way for reaching roots — reverberating in my belly, and I know you’ve been waiting — for me —</p><p id="892c">You emerge from the dark, amber moonlight flickering like fire — your body lit with desire — across flesh and fur —and I’m catching my breath — long

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ing for the graze of your cheekbones against my breast —(<i>always a little pain) —</i>and I don’t want to tame you — I want you to wild me — want you to howl at the moon of me.</p><p id="d17e">Lay me down upon the moss, lover. Divest me of everything but the flower in my hair— lay my fears bare — let the night-kissed air transmute our lust — all the skin of me, laid to you in trust — in the whispering wood of us — the wilder wood of you, rising, taking root inside— pleasure blooming from my mouth in verdant sighs — lose yourself, love, in my groves and grottoes —</p><p id="3a08">— and the wildflowers, under our merging bodies, unfurling like quicksilver from our mingled elixir — rise to petal our deep-wooded love-bower —</p><p id="d56e">It’s an enchanted forest, after all.</p><p id="424a"><b><i>© Melissa Coffey, September 2021</i></b></p><p id="67a9">In response to yet another prompt from the incendiary imagination of <a href="undefined">J.D. Harms</a> — “<a href="https://readmedium.com/semiotics-and-lovers-a-prompt-c4b822d98296">speaking with Eros</a>”. My narrative went a little playfully wild — but as I say, a good story is rarely told straight on. I liked the idea of playing with the terms urban /myth — and returning to the verdant woods of an earlier prose poem:</p><div id="111e" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/in-the-woods-of-your-words-e4b645b38406"> <div> <div> <h2>In the Woods of Your Words</h2> <div><h3>Seduced by your wild mythology — a prose-poem</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/0*qtf2iOB3IEowadJ4)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div></article></body>

Echoes of moonlight and midnight’s heated pursuits

Roused from sleep, you’re a waking dream in my room— vivid despite dawn’s half-light — light enough to see you’re only half-human — your lower half, torn from the pages of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, slipped under my pillow. Shadows, carried with you from wooded places, play over your hips, shadows merging into — not thighs, but haunches. Your hair, needled upwards like pine boughs in forested winds. The memory of startled senses — yours and mine — your bared chest rising in time to my heartbeats and then —

You’re gone — the air in your wake, drunk from pheremonious musk — ripe with echoes of moonlight and midnight’s heated pursuits — and now, I’m gasping — I’ve breathed you in, breathed in want — the wanting of you — and I wonder why you appeared — did you catch the scent of me on a moist west wind — flaring your nostrils, firing your loins —

Your scent, a spell, the only perfume I’ll wear today — calling the naiad of me to come out and play — so I dress to draw you, in a skirt the brazen summer sun may peek right through — wishing it was you — wishing I could seek you bare-breasted as a wood sprite — instead I steal a gardenia from a neighbour’s tree to adorn my hair, invite the breeze to kiss my bare calves as —

Across the street, I think I glimpse you — in camouflage, on the hunt for a latte—provocative Pan-pose, the blue-jean cling of urban fur on your lithe limbs — the sensual roll of tree-brushed hills in your gait — they say love is blind — maybe lust is hallucinogenic.

And I’m asking the birds if they’ve passed Eros in their flights — he’s bound to have noticed your fey nature— and we know the forests are shrinking — maybe all mythical woodland creatures are adapting to suburban sprawl — the streets, running wild at night with satyrs and fauns —

Turn a corner — there’s Eros, leaning against a street sign, sharpening his arrows — he winks and whispers something I can’t catch — lean in closer — and there’s blood on my arm — he prophesies (to no-one in particular) —

Always a little pain in the pursuit of love

I want to ask if you’re an urban myth — but he bends to rake an arrow in the dirt — opens an ancient ley line, like the power of enchanted blood from a vein — I’m smelling you in the air again as he bids me — tread this line on tiptoe facing east —it leads straight into Arcadia — and then — the light trembles —

I never promised you I was a reliable narrator — Eros’ arrows are straight, but love is not — stories are not — not the interesting ones. I’m a heroine on a quest, questing the mythology of you — now I understand Psyche’s curiosity — to get just a glimpse.

And I’m feeling the brush of fir branches on my cheeks. Orange moon rising reveals a grassy clearing, a ring of trees — and the ring of deep laughter in the air around me, like rock-fall, like rich earth making way for reaching roots — reverberating in my belly, and I know you’ve been waiting — for me —

You emerge from the dark, amber moonlight flickering like fire — your body lit with desire — across flesh and fur —and I’m catching my breath — longing for the graze of your cheekbones against my breast —(always a little pain) —and I don’t want to tame you — I want you to wild me — want you to howl at the moon of me.

Lay me down upon the moss, lover. Divest me of everything but the flower in my hair— lay my fears bare — let the night-kissed air transmute our lust — all the skin of me, laid to you in trust — in the whispering wood of us — the wilder wood of you, rising, taking root inside— pleasure blooming from my mouth in verdant sighs — lose yourself, love, in my groves and grottoes —

— and the wildflowers, under our merging bodies, unfurling like quicksilver from our mingled elixir — rise to petal our deep-wooded love-bower —

It’s an enchanted forest, after all.

In response to yet another prompt from the incendiary imagination of J.D. Harms — “speaking with Eros”. My narrative went a little playfully wild — but as I say, a good story is rarely told straight on. I liked the idea of playing with the terms urban /myth — and returning to the verdant woods of an earlier prose poem: