A girl is in a grove, accompanied
By some familiar, a faithful greyhound,
A frolicking hind of rose-madder pink,
Or maybe a coveted unicorn.
She bundles a clumsy spray of spring flowers.
A party of youthful hunters has found
Her here. They pour through a gap in the wood.
One points to her while turning back to tell
The others, who lean and look, cradling
Their spears on stallions draped in lilac.
She withdraws from us. Final shafts of sunset
Will leave her to preserving darkness a while,
Though the sun will return and continue
To bleach her hem of woad and indigo,
The cochineal crimson of her rolled bonnet,
Her tunic of fustian and lady’s bedstraw
Whitened away each day by ordinary waves
Of August afternoon as it melts the mist
And takes her grove and her hunters away.
For now she’s safe again. The dusk has come.
Ernest Hilbert is the author of the poetry collections Sixty Sonnets, All of You on the Good Earth, Caligulan—selected as winner of the 2017 Poets’ Prize and Last One Out. His fifth book, Storm Swimmer, was selected by Rowan Ricardo Phillips as the winner of the 2022 Vassar Miller Prize. Visit him at ernesthilbert.com.
Author photo: Matthew Wright
Image: “Valediction” by JC Alfier
JC Alfier is a poet and photo-artist whose aesthetics are informed by Yoko Mizuki, Francesca Woodman, and especially Katrien De Blauwer.
Pine Hills Review 