Annual Reflections In Depth Perspectives

scanner Art by Richard Lance Williams
This Issue: Health & Well-Being

Frog Prince Revisited
by Stephanie Pope

cloth boy
clothed in manhood
green in god head
a manifest—more vital than formal
alive in all ages
yet more and more the threads
of different figures joined
blended and crossed curiously
are manifest more vital than formal
more and more true;
erichthonian tearer up and grounded
grind 'er down (my ground, my gritty)
a hill-torn art is too newly formed
with softer-colored undetermined sheen
like color-sheer mirror-tempered
redoubling seas; god-magical, this boy
always en fans

he carries not across
a cross in the mien
the fullness is to come
not across but a word
aged coat upon a stick thrown down to thread
ferries the word in hands clapped to itself
carries the word to itself by its
self, veiled and storied; a word that is its own story
carries the lived thing into surfaces and

onward the sole thread runs still
through all things different in lights
the knit more difficult to read, but truer
because of it

-1st published in Tonight: An Anthology of World Love Poetry, © August, 2008 Poet's Printery, South Africa

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