Daye 31 / Licorice

licorice they named her
after one of the girls
from the incredible string band
wonderous were her eyes
raven-coloured her hair
like her namesake
disappeared into the ether
I came home one evening
in november
the house was dark and still
and she was no longer there
left only a cool note
in a spidery-light hand
and fifteen short fragments of song
one for each emotion
that she had known on that autumn day
and I don’t know where she is
or whether she wants to be found
but I once saw her sitting on a moonbeam
when she was still dreaming of me
watched as she stooped to kiss
the flowers for hours and hours
I saw her face on the low grey cloud
on a snowy december morning
find her floating in a tiny boat
on a becalmed lake
she is disguised as robin puck
when I awake
as a child in a field of poppies
she appears as pan
when I am lost in the willow wood
only now do I recognize her masquerade
as the morning star
one time in swansea at dawn
long ago
and as the evening star
in flowery fields one dusk
recall that in a previous life
she had lived in a big house on tempest drive
then see far into her future life
when she’ll live in the slums of mumbai
and I’ll travel to some far-off planet
where aldebaran is hovering above us
mmm, how crimson and eerily pretty she'll look
in that failing star’s light
in a wintery lane
star-gazing
she slaps my face
when I mistake her for a spiral galaxy
and tell her she is beautiful
she has become the motherstorm
blowing in from across the atlantic
to wash away the great green irish sea
she’s the simultaneous equation
to which their can never be a solution
and the golden flash of light
that streaks overhead
as we lay in the long soft grass
one balmy august
and from high on a hillside in disley
I can still see her gathering
mushrooms in the half-light
and hear her in the harmonium
that begins to play itself the next night
as I lay half-asleep on the rug by the fire
she floats over to whisper at me
that she is here