As little as a candle’s flame, I hold <br />Dreams for you, like <br />Amethyst on the courthouse floor, <br />Like a heron perched on a branch in <br />The belly of the jewel-weed lake; <br />I bight my lip over on the veranda of <br />A wedding, and the entire sky is dismissively <br />Beautiful as an open lover; <br />I drive beneath her, the day proceeds in <br />The courting of its hours, but come never <br />Nearer to your breathing space; <br />The cold-blooded alligators peddle toward <br />Warmth, and the key-deer nuzzle against <br />The knees of cypress. There are story books <br />Lost like children in the everglades, <br />And down airplanes like freshwater coral; <br />But I held you in my head today, coming up <br />To the surface, this hopeful oxygen, <br />Both the naivety of my artistic dysfunction, <br />And the entrepreneur of its creation; <br />If justified, I would open a store of you, and sell <br />It in colorful grains in bottles, and in shells; <br />If you were to come in, I would show you around, <br />And show you how easily you sell, or catch you <br />By surprise, press my lips to yours, and <br />Hand over your self worth in a book of distilled <br />Lines, how you lay there, the lucidity of my creation, <br />A little dream of you, like a candle’s flame, <br />I keep folded in my pocket when I walk alone <br />In the quiet forest, hiding your light from the darkness.<br /><br />Robert Rorabeck<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-the-quiet-forest/
