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.

this happened 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 antithesis of earth, ankle-deep into dark

and swampy things where otherworldly creatures slithered

and tightened their grip, 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 elegance draping the slender

avenue of her neck into the valley of the shoulders glazed beneath

the presence of moonlight, and she walked to the place of her going

without a hint of care of my existence, but I say, she was fine indeed,

and dream or no dream, snakes or no snakes, I’d freakin' do it again.