Free Fall

Consider Sappho shivering in her summer dress.
Bird boned in the glint of the moon’s thin blade,
she walks ahead on the cliff path of tender grass.
Like you, she loved pomegranate trees, oleanders made
thick with flowers, watched clouds pass like camels,
padding bare hills of Eressos with cushioned feet.

Despite slander and the warp of time, think well
of her – of her bold, gentle heart, poems to blast
hypocrisy, her belief in love’s immortality, wings
clipped never silenced the lark. I take your arm, casually.
Your words, like compass needles, reverberate and sing
through rock, earth’s chalk skin, and the rolling sea.
Even the grass grows pale when we dare look down.
You pull back as though you had always known.

Sue Davies