a pleasant, haunting taunt

Best known, in the gospels of the poet's life and time in Los Angeles, for inspiring the poems "dram" and "Cithara Song, strummed lightly as the sun leaps the horizon", the beautiful and brilliant young woman he named "the wisp" has a fixed and forever spot in his story.

a pleasant, haunting taunt

there you were
like the wisp I always said you were
filtering up in a shadowed light
between the phosphors before me.

why you? why now?
coincidence? conjurement?
or just one of those slippery
"let's see what he does with this" traps?

I could reach out and touch you
like I failed to do when first awake,
preferring to let trivialities rule me.
or I could weave my own spell:

words into light. light into darkness.
darkness into the hypercube.
praying for a sign, as if your name
dancing with lavender claws, were not enough.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.