A Longer Walk through Unknown Fields

He did not know where she was until he heard her call his name.
He did not know her gentleness, her tender grace by the sound
of her voice. He would not know that, if ever, until later.
If the fields were familiar, their wildness, their savagery was new.
When she came into view he knew he had already seen her.
She lived in another country, where the people were less angry,
more forgiving than here. When he took her hand she took his,
they sauntered and strolled and ambled, they crossed one field
to another, they were like chapters in a book of goodbye.
Fingers wet with lips that turned the pages, they came to love.
In dreams that are not nightmares the mind still wakes to fear
the unknown: a growth of weeds or crops too high to see
above the path’s unseen turn, the feet of lovers too bare
not to feel thorns, broken stalks, what else covers the ground.

(26 February 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander