Daphne and Apollo

I have fallen in love. I have even fallen in love in forests. But it was not the rushing water and meandering light that lit some incendiary blaze between my legs, made me sweat, made me forget my mouth and stomach. It was whiskey and a scowling hot summer that made me love you, that made me love being loved by you. It was the unfinished women all around us, a Patti Smith poster and a half-painted world that only happened to be in the forest, that wasn’t actually there. It was a tapestry I covered the world over with, it was a stained glass window which I used as a magnifying glass to solve the great mystery of the universe. And so instead of following footprints I only found the Madonna and Child on every surface, only saw your face looking out at the world and begging me to read it, only could relish in bare feet and dirty dishes and breasts which heave and weep and fuck. If I could lie to my God and doctor all my memories I would remember myself as some lithe and fleeing Daphne to your Apollo, but you and I both know that this was not our story. I have never been able to help loving like a God, pursuing flesh which evades my clutches, fumbling dumbly with trees which only seconds earlier shook not with the wind but with breath and blood. I have felt men turn to branches in my arms, felt them root and resist and leave me talking to myself in a meadow of half-remembered tendernesses. I have climbed my old lovers, carved my name into their sides, rested in their shade and in the winter torn them down for kindling. They have had their season too, our memories; shedding leaves and blossoming in spring