Three Poems By Marly Youmans

Reverie
 
The end of anything that’s beautiful
Is never found; is like a bottomless
Lake of clarity with pebbles falling;
Like dream-born faces we will never grasp,
The eyes like pools, the mouth a somber rose.
 
Like rainbows, beauty is a mutable:
The maple tree in glowing autumn dress
That flings its fairy coins on air, calling
A child to gather what she cannot clasp
For keeps—thus beauty teaches what it knows.

Silk
 
Abandoned, wailing on the garden walk,
A baby wrapped in green brocaded silk…
 
A child’s moonflowers climb in the live oaks
Where floss of light’s the highest graded silk.
 
In labyrinths of leaves, a young girl hides,
Though sunlight glints on hair of braided silk.
 
First teenage kisses in the arbor’s shade:
The soft moonflowers, night-time’s traded silk.
 
While dreaming of a deeper green of leaves,
A woman sought a stream and waded silk.
 
The matriarch weaves years from bloom and thorn:
The elvish cloth’s abraded, faded silk.
 
When ghosts infest the river past her gate,
A crone recalls how moths invaded silk.      

Metamorphoses
 
She passed into the tree, sinking through sheath
And rings and rose up shimmering
Through aspen leaves.
 
She passed into a song, its floating wreath
Of notes a ring of glimmering,
Beauty that grieves.
 
She passed into fragrance, a flowery field,
Where petals were the only shade.
Her breath was bloom.
 
What secrets do such marriages reveal
When soul becomes a bride to fade
Into its groom?

The most recent poetry book by Marly Youmans is The Book of the Red King (Montreal: Phoenicia Publishing, 2019.) Her most recent novel is Charis in the World of Wonders (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2020.) www.thepalaceat2.blogspot.com