As little as a candle’s flame, I hold
Dreams for you, like
Amethyst on the courthouse floor,
Like a heron perched on a branch in
The belly of the jewel-weed lake;
I bight my lip over on the veranda of
A wedding, and the entire sky is dismissively
Beautiful as an open lover;
I drive beneath her, the day proceeds in
The courting of its hours, but come never
Nearer to your breathing space;
The cold-blooded alligators peddle toward
Warmth, and the key-deer nuzzle against
The knees of cypress. There are story books
Lost like children in the everglades,
And down airplanes like freshwater coral;
But I held you in my head today, coming up
To the surface, this hopeful oxygen,
Both the naivety of my artistic dysfunction,
And the entrepreneur of its creation;
If justified, I would open a store of you, and sell
It in colorful grains in bottles, and in shells;
If you were to come in, I would show you around,
And show you how easily you sell, or catch you
By surprise, press my lips to yours, and
Hand over your self worth in a book of distilled
Lines, how you lay there, the lucidity of my creation,
A little dream of you, like a candle’s flame,
I keep folded in my pocket when I walk alone
In the quiet forest, hiding your light from the darkness.
Robert Rorabeck
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-the-quiet-forest/
