[Ms. Meander]

Written by a dear friend, for me, in response to one I sent her (my most recent 9 Words post):


in the evening cloud shadowed meadow
of the brook whose source is unknown
a woman dressed in
tattered thread-web flowing rags
stood swaying with the spires of grasses

most of the passers-by on the road above ...
the one that leads to the city …
saw a beggar and a fool

but the moon, the brook and i
(i, whose heart has been broken
by the kiss of God)
beheld a solitary, a woman of the coven of the wind
a woman who, as is known by the wanderers of the deserts,
is a darvish, a madjub,
a queen in beggars rags,
a soul gifted with the banishment
of those who are by birth forbidden
to walk the road from town to town
and must, therefore, live
in the meadows of the moon
where there is no path to define her way
no sign to distract her view
and only the nourishment of the brook
whose source and destiny is unknowable