Canticle: To e.s

YOUR words are beautiful, beautiful
like a languorous snowfall
muffling the heart’s low beat
with their murmurous slow sweet
chronicle.

They are jewel clear
as heart of glacier
or the garnet pear
on Aladdin’s magic tree
that so sparkled, he
rubbed his dark eyes, there
in the robber’s shadowy lair.

They are sweet, sweet
like the marguerite
in her snow of petals strewn
in a sweet dissolving swoon,—
essence of all afternoon.

And they whisper on and on
like the ocean’s swell
bound in iridescent shell.

Beautiful, beautiful,
like diatom’s drifting fall,
sifting down the ocean’s deep.
Like the treasures dreamers keep
hidden in the caves of sleep.