Within every woman was once a bird aflutter

White feathers poised for possibilities
Liquid eyes wondering at the great beyond
Inciting her to that unknown flight
Over the walls of mind, womb, man and god
To whiten, in the wake of her white feather flight,
The ink of the lines that they wrote for her

Within every woman was once that bird almost free
Inside every man is a cage

How we remember with unusual calm that walk up the brown mountain path

To the singing stream where the blossoms of the rainbow flowers fell
And us below the overhang of the umbrella tree and its jungle green
Cool in the black cold of its afternoon shadow in the yellow sun
That day was warm to the touch and we were dizzy velvet
We had walked through the zigzag of sheeny dragon flies
And seen a white butterfly, the only albino of that queendom
Heard the bees whimper and buzz in the pollen’s ecstasy
Watched a squirrel watch a sparrow jounce twig to twig
We kissed ascetic branches, stern, stout, gnarled and immortal
Like sylphs we talked to the birds and made the crickets call
Below us the canal was forking, it flowed blue, it filled many fields
We were like flightless clouds, astray in the languid wind
You then said: We must remember this, this walk up the brown mountain path.
And then the day fell mute, the sun blinked, twilight shimmered
We couldn't allow the night, we let ourselves go and trundled down
We rolled through the rough brown mountain road and its jutting rocks
Over the cobbles in the river’s gravelly bank and the weeds of the grey marsh
Until there was a gate, a door cut four ways, a key, a latch, a lock and a lamp
We are home, finally we are home, look we are home, I said.
But we would never be home again.