Monday Poem: Distant lands

Distant lands

I knew you then,
you had secrets and such dark hair
that kept you hidden
like some eastern veiled bride-to-be
floating though our more ordinary days
with the scent of exotic unguents
and mysterious, languid perfumes
floating all around you
like loose diaphanous robes.

You were distant, untouchable;
a land too far
out of reach of my prosaic hands.
You needed a hero,
an adventurer, to conquer you.

And, these days,
I no longer know you
as you sit in a rusty tired car
outside the school gates
waiting for your children,
all with your dark eyes
that could, so easily
be sailing out on journeys
across distant mysterious seas.

 

[First published in BORDERLINES 37 (Winter 2005) Anglo-Welsh Poetry Society]