Bookends

A beginning and an end, a pair of bookends bracketing a literary relationship. The middle is to follow...plus illustrations.

Morning After Pill

You lay, as if in state, an effigy

That sleeps on beds of marmoreal black

In our cathedral towns. 

But you

Fresh-made from alabaster, pale on pale.

Your sleeping face had lost all trace of care

Your lower lip, like some exotic fruit

Hung round and full. 

My breast

By serpent’s forked tongue already pierced

The bitter nectar staining reddening lips.

Cathy Dalton 2019

Measure for Measure

‘Come dance with me' she asked of him, and he

Matched step for step with graceful symmetry

A courtly dance of great intricacy

They danced at midnight’s glimmer, noonday’s glow

Twirled in the half-light of the twilit zone

That borders day and dreaming lands unknown

He dance without his lady while she slept

And followed blindly while she steadfast kept

Her dreaming watch; the minstrel left

The lute fell silent, and the muse, alone

Retraced her fading footsteps back towards home.

Cathy Dalton May 1 2020

Measure for Measure was published in 'Poetry in the Plague Year', an online anthology of poetry written during lockdown. 

https://www.poetrykit.org/py/00072.htm