Fire is Favorable to the Dreamer
LOVE OF LOST TIME
Notice the tree of discarded leaves
bent by the river where a woman holds a line.
Metaphors hardly visible,
shadings of weight, pauses in tone,
flick of memory,
as the river yields light and motion
of current.
She never tried to triumph in whitewater
or upon sheer faces of rock.
Instead, fading pictures
where slouch and grace showed them
all without clothes,
sharing ripe fruit,
as, one by one, they traded images,
dropped numbered expectations
while cast off pips
bobbed drunkenly downstream.
Love of lost time is a bottomless eddy
where her line will circle and keep on circling.
Poem by Susan Terris from Fire Is Favorable to the Dreamer