On Seeing A Maid by the Water (written for Fed Poets Society April 2023)
Her hair in cascades falls about her neck
Her red lips moist like ripened summer fruit;
Tinkling laughter issues from her mouth
This naiad seated barefoot by the stream.
Then from her foam-white throat a rippling song
Whose siren note might raise the very flood.
I gaze upon the dark pools of her eyes
In dread of what those placid waters hide.
Like rain and rolling thunder in the storm
My blood flowed hot, by passion sorely gripped;
I made to speak – then stopped: my ardour dammed:
Less fearing to be spurned or suffer scorn,
More made unsure by what swims in those depths,
Afraid to drown as two souls are entwined.
