the mid-18th century dream

In the silence of the vale

I encountered a lady

who was fine indeed,

and me, no more than a bum-like thing

where the road narrowed

to a slim slip of dirt

and allowing her passage

I stepped aside

into the heavy marshland

into the briers into the brambles

into cow dung ankle-deep

into dark and swampy things

where otherworldly animals

slithered and tightened, one foot

then the other, bitten by

who knows what beneath the silt

as she shifted her body

to an angle in a way that said

don’t touch me, the full

measure of the moon

draping the slender

avenue of her neck

into the valley to the shoulders

glazed beneath the

awkward presence of

the lesser moon, and she walked

to the place of her going,–– but I say,

she was fine indeed,

and dream or no dream

snakes or no snakes

I’d freakin' do it it again.