Cinderella Woods
And she came walking with me through woods of sweet chestnut
where falling autumn hides in last year's lace edged blanket
of moth-eaten leaf.
Underneath a sky bruised with rain and dusted in a bloom of cloud
the slim sweet chestnuts brood in graphite clusters.
Chestnuts bundle in the dark green canopy
until they tumble in hedgehogs and lay startled in nests of ginger leaf.
We roasted some on the charred enamel blisters of an old tin tray
and afterward swam naked in a drop of dew
that pinched the moon between its fingers.
Glitter ember,
I kissed her
under the stars, in quicksilver ripple, and violet shadow,
and she slipped from the water
dusted herself with bracken
used a pine needle to stitch her torn dress.
I was invisible in her arms,
in an ash-blue clearing,
in soft cream;
and in my head she was
dreaming black, vermillion, jasmine,
wrapped in the mauve blanket of midnight,
curled in the tongue of an owl.