The Diploma.

On the flinty lips of my birth-river,
A spring-water river that runs passionately
Beneath Artemis’ lavish cliffs,
You loosened the swaddles of my unfledged
Soul.

You picked the soft cloth slowly
With the tips of your grin
And unwound it
And,
Turn after turn
Like the swift, graceful cadence
Of a swallow’s tail
The bandage ascended above me;

And beneath us the pebbles,
Some full-white, some flecked with red
As if sprayed with the blood
Of crushed cherries,
Smooth, round and made alive by the
Wild paws of Artemis’ hounds,
Crooned at each turn
After turn
Of our disordered twine
Tightened fast in the rushing turns
Of love-in-the-making.

Two elks, then two tigers,
Two butterflies crazily searching
For their buds
Through the fine tapestry of the
River
Spray and the
Sun
Rays;

And when my soul fledged
And the soft swaddles dispersed
Into the beating rush of the passionate river,
Your grin intensified
A little,
Like a signature on a graduate’s diploma,
You unwrapped your flesh from mine
And walked away
Following the banks,
Looking for another.

I gripped anxiously at the diploma.

“Ah, a diploma!”
They now say and look at me proudly.
Tempus may fugit
But my diploma stays!
Posterity’s evidence that my soul is
Fully fledged;

Yet my body,
My body,
Is still naked
And still unfledged.

atomou