The quiet courtship - Poem

the quiet courtship

   the quiet courtship travels
   from eye to eye, a question
   that will not return
   a slender wind among trees
   caressing the senses of leaves with
   the clean glass of words of its songs
   its languid whisper whispering
   you rest as a droplet of spray
   like air on the slope of my lip
   and in this dream of desire
   the length of my shadow reclines for you

   a bodiless dancer
   this quiet courtship
   a salmon under a slab
   in the deep black water
   (the pool
   a dark roast porter
   where the head on my hope waits
   under the waterfall's dizzying scud)
   and should you come in spate
   down the steep cleft between paps
   between avoidance and refusal
   should you come in a plaited onrush
   of water sweet as dawn dew
   i'd be up among the bright gems of your kisses,
   i'd spring as an instant lustrous tree
   might rise from its liquid root in you
   and there in your upland swards
   all turbulent cataracts far far behind me,
   and i'd rest in the pebbled streams of your kisses
   see how it comes
   the quiet courtship, like morning's thoughts
   stealing out from under the low gloom of night,
   stroking each hollow and shoulder,
   and then without fuss, the radiant day
   and, as if leaping away from
   a dumb narcotic cave,
   the brimming roar of birdsongs

   here i am, the stammering youth
   (better say nothing at all)
   but o, how your luminous sun
   leaves my skin in fire

Aonghas MacNeacail is a native of Skye and presently lives in Peeblesshire. His poetry collection Oideachadh Ceart agus dain eile/ A Proper Schooling and other poems won The Stakis Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year in 1997. He has published several other collections of poetry, including imaginary wounds, sireadh bradain sicir/ seeking wise salmon, and an cathadh mor/the great snowbattle.

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