Forget the fall! Just tell me how you flew
before the air around you pivoted
right-angle with the sea, and plummeted
by skywards, when you traded blue for blue.

Forget the melting-candle smell before,
and don't tell me you were afraid -- you bore
me when you do. Keep on this way, I'll go --
unless you'll tell me how it was to know

the sky as intimately as the earth
knows rain. You're flotsam now, and wash ashore
in floating feathers, nibbled bones -- it's worth
it for the myth and gorgeous metaphor.

Indifferent poets picked your ribs like eels --
you never said how flight or falling feels.

Listen, lover, when you asked, I told
you, "Bring me wild roses" -- well, I meant
it like the princess who, unloving, sent
her swain to find a star. Since it is cold

December and no wild roses are
alive -- but you come back, your hands and arms

in tatters, like the fragrant feral things
Resisted you, as I have, with their claws.
What kind of idiot would think to bring
me what I asked for, when no binding clause

can hold me to the promises I made?
Did you collect me stories with those blooms?
You're spattered with their barbarous perfume --
but tell me all you saw, and I'll be swayed.