The Wayfarer Waits

I saw her in the exceptional stillness of a vagabond. By her severely immodest beauty I was frozen in wonder.
I blinked and she was gone.
So I waited in the knoll by the way, where I prayed she would return again.

Once I had awoken twisting in the winter, sure that I had heard a figment of her song on the wind. I screamed to a pale silhouette that did not turn. So I went back to my camp and packed full my pipe again. And drank sleepily. And I waited.

Spring turned with the dolence of winter.
With no more hope I shruged to the next town and left the meadow with a pile of stems athwart wilted, brown pedals. And hers was among the very first faces I saw entering town.
I cried to her, voice boyishly cracking, “How long have you been here? I saw you on the way, and called to you. I stopped my journey for a season waiting for you to pass again.”

“I know,” she said, “I’ve often seen you, sleeping through the morning.”