Free Verse
Queen of
the Nile
On my horizon
the sun releases twilight,
as the clock eases past midnight on your
side of the world
You tell me you want to make love by the Nile,
that river snake that slithers silently
from Africa, through your beloved Egypt,
into the waiting Mediterranean sea.
You will lift my gown of a hundred stars,
ease me onto your spread tunic, raise
my legs high to your shoulders, fill
my hungry spaces, as the night sky watches
and the Sphinx purrs lazily
across the dark empty sand.
Anthony and Cleopatra-
center stage once again.
~
A poem floats
from my head,
disturbs the blue jay asleep in the elm,
slips through the window next door,
sending an elderly couple running
with surprised haste to a bed unshared
these past twenty years.
My body tingles and I know
you dream of me now, just as
I will dream of you in my own turn,
waking late, soaked in my own sweat
and longings, my gown tossed,
and one star still pressed
to the center of my forehead.
Previously
published in Women of the Web, a print
anthology.
Read
Additional Poems by Pris Campbell
