Gypsy
Honeymoon
by Diane
Frank
This is Michael Carey for Voices
from the Prairie a weekly sampling from the rich soil of Iowa’s literary
tradition. Today’s poem is "Gypsy Honeymoon" by the Fairfield
poet Diane Frank. Imagine yourself receiving a phone call and then a letter
with a photograph from someone you love or are about to. Soon you will be together.
You see flowers blooming and lovers kissing. They all speak louder to you now.
Somehow the moment before you are together, that waiting for what seems forever,
is intense and beautiful almost as beautiful and memorable as what comes after.
Gypsy Honeymoon
First your voice came.
Then the photograph.
I am meeting you from the inside out.
Even before I see you,
I might be stroking the fine
hair of your forearms with my words,
running the soft edges of my hands
along your ankles,
or kissing the whisper of your collarbone.
I know that bone –
I saw it in a dream.
If I open the lighthouse,
can you stand the intensity
of silverfish swimming to the moon?
Right now it is midnight.
Two lovers are kissing on the top of a stone wall
as their shadows stretch across a gypsy garden.
They walk through wild asparagus,
lupines, opium poppies,
mountain trails of wild irises.
Rhododendron petals
float to their bare
feet over stones.
It is only moments before I see you.
Right now we are picking wild blackberries.
Right now we are the happiest people in the world.
"Gypsy Honeymoon" by Diane Frank from her book The Winter
Life of Shooting Stars published by Blue Light Press.
For Voices from the Prairie and Humanities Iowa, this is Michael Carey hoping you continue to hear the music blooming all around you.
Biography
Diane Frank is the author of four books of poetry: The Winter Life of Shooting Stars (Blue Light Press, 1999), The All Night Yemenite Café, (Dark River Press, 1993), Rhododendron Shedding Its Skin (Blue Light Press, 1998), Isis (Project Press, 1982) and a novel Blackberries in the Dreamhouse. A recipient of the Whiffen Poetry Prize, two Pushcart Prize nominations, two Cressy Book Awards, and an NFSPS Poetry Prize, she is also a documentary scriptwriter with expertise in Eastern and Scared Art. She divides her time between San Francisco and Fairfield Iowa where she directs Poets at 8:00, and teaches poetry, journal writing, and creative non-fiction workshops in the Professional Writing Program at Maharishi International University and in her living room.