A winsome lad was he, who would a roaming go,
as light as any feather, or flocked clouds blow,
and sure he’d watch them dive and rock,

appear as any face time would have out of clock,
o’er dale and vale through the greenwood glen,
until blood red they’d trail in sky crimson.

Where ‘twas it all began, ‘pon that very shore,
though after, he said, he couldn’t be so sure,
says she came and first it seemed, ‘twere a hornet’s hum,

but, said he, it augured a mite strange to him,
he a mere feather fluff twixt sky and sea,
as like rainbows cascading fluttering butterflies

in the skies, came she dancing, swimming,
o’er the valleys, forests and mountains.
She dived, she swooped, she looped

till the distant silhouetted hills riveted stood,
as the treetops and he, who starkened gasped.
So with enchanting smile did she round

and all and suddenly come to ground, and
in a field yonder, where a scarecrow brooded,
there stood she, black robed and hooded.

Her back was turned but her bony finger crooked,
gnarled and leprous white, him it beckoned,
and as he went unto that fatal spot in dread,

her hand withdrew into her shroud,
her hood full upon him swiveled,
and, said he, hang him by his very gland,

such face he saw of ghastly hideousity,
he could not believe his own eyes were for he,
as with ghostly cackle, said she, come kiss we.

So placed he his lips on scarred hers,
and was kissed as the jackal wildly chews
and leaps convulsed on stench of carcass.

Like a granite cliff split open felt he,
who saw himself a chasm in her eye,
where rocks crumbled to sea’s bottom.

So that kiss seemed to him so long
until a sudden moment where they’d become
love’s very rapture and there they danced

‘til all her raiment fell awry
and she stood there, proud and shy.
Come kiss me more whispered she just once

and seized him in her blossomed arms.
He said, ‘twere all moons ever human seen,
rose over him and lay within her eyes.

And so she left him, that winsome lad,
naked and bedewed upon his bed,
so that when dawn came, he said,

he awoke with love’s rose more lean;
and I don’t know how he got here with his dream,
here at the tavern, where I am the ferryman.

Copyright Robin Ouzman Hislop. 2003
All rights reserved