PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I never met any of his six wives,
neither his daughters, nor his son.  Their lives
were far from mine.  Born to a minor squire;
I was a country girl, with no desire
for courtly passion or for worldly fame:
too often those brought death, exile, or shame.
At fourteen years, my own age then, he came
to our estate; he said, just to relax
from tutors, Tudors, and thick books' high stacks.
He asked me---me!---to take a walk with him.
Shirtless, in breaches (gorgeous!), and barefoot
he said that I should honor his least whim:
what did that mean?  He laughed and said to put
my shoes off---such soft grass has been created
for unshod (and, for me, silk-stockinged) feet,
and should not be left unappreciated.
So I complied.  He smiled.  And off we went.
(Years later, worldliness fully estranged
him from himself, his best, so crudely changed.)
But on that cloudless, sundrenched afternoon
(that ended, as such gifts must, all too soon),
he seemed a common boy without conceit
(not like the kind of prince you might suppose),
and I, a curvy girl, and innocent.
Unhurried there, except by time, we spent
those all too few (but, therefore, sweetest) hours
down by the brook, or else among the flowers.
And as it was some distance we had walked,
we sat, then sprawled out casually, and talked.
Meanwhile, he kissed and nipped my dark-sheathed toes---
explaining that this was a private pleasure
that promised blisses of exquisite measure
to those who came to it with sole devotion.
(Later, mere lust, or some such rank commotion
drove it out of his heart, out of his mind;
he said, himself, only the most refined
possessed it.)  Oh, that day's remembrance strives
with his more brutal acts, done as crowned king.
But to these better memories I cling,
and in this poem, perhaps, they will endure
to tell the image of him I prefer:

with me!---two adolescents talking there,
shoeless, and shy, and wholly without care.

Starward