Poem to Michèle

I see you hiding there, behind your eyes, behind your body,
A nymph whose forest home is all a careless order;
Whose life is o'erstrewn with deliberate debris 

 

I see you hiding there, behind your looks behind your gestures,
Fearing that I will soil your sylvan floor with rude footprints,
And yet beckoning, beckoning -- I can but go. 

 

I see you hiding there, behind your words, behind your silence.
You are that which I myself would like to be.
I seek not to own you but to become you. 

 

I see you hiding there, behind your eyes, behind your body.
I know not whether we will be one or forever two,
But I know that it is into your forest that I must go.

-- September 12, 1991 copyright © 1991, 2005