Two miles away from you may your lover tremble with excitement,
one mile away may he bite his lip in anticipation
I would have journeyed to him unbidden,
my path from the temple fated and traced
by sandaled feet, dusty but eager
in their purpose, the way we find our gods.
What lives in him would spark
the fuse that drives and draws me
beside the spring where he comes to drink,
where I will lie down, naked and spread under sun
for the man who runs with deer.
I have an appetite for gods
or the man ridden by them, still smelling
of the clay that shaped him, struck with light;
a man with hair longer than my own,
whose kisses taste like wild grass.
I am the one who opens and is taken
but when he stands again and turns
back to the deer, they no longer know him.
Like Delilah, I will cut his hair,
but openly, because love tames–
how many wild things are broken
by the women who lie under
***Italicized words are from Enkidu’s blessing to Shamhat, from the epic of Gilgamesh, via Stephen Miller.
***My choice for NaPoWriMo. The prompt suggested using a non-Greek mythological source, so I went to Babylon for this one. This is a slight edit of a poem I did a year ago. It fits too nicely into the prompt to not use it.
Susan Daniels Poetry 