One day, revisited

Here is a fun little love-poem, in the spirit of Valentine's day. I'm sorry I didn't have the heart to write a new one. Maybe one will come to me, yet.

One day

I want to be the bed
you fall into
at the end of your journey

not a motel bed, me--
stale and generic,
with a stiff polyester bedspread
and magic fingers if you insert a quarter

I would be
an apple-pie bed, dry and warm
sheets fresh off the line,
quilt plump and waiting
smelling of no other
but you

Rachel Westfall
December 25, 2008

Wanderer

My lute cracked
when I saw the memory
of your beloved face
echoed in the river.
She still plays the same old songs,
but now with a rasp,
a smoke-and-gravel hue,
the grief of flamenco.

Our dream child
is a tattered maid now, her lullaby
twisted by our fate
as a basket-weaver binds the rushes
that grow along the riverbank
in weeping, boggy strips,
the low lament
of the Soleá.

Rachel Westfall
February 7, 2012