A little tip of the hat to Ms. Millay who has the distinction of being the inaugural poet featured on Poetry Monday back on January 31st. OK, well maybe it doesn’t carry as much weight as the Pulitizer Prize she won for The Ballad of the Harp Weaver or the Frost Medal she was awarded. She does, however, have a special place in my heart as being the poet who started this whole exercise. I like Milllay; she makes me feel that the obsessive manner that I adopt regarding my relationships with the fairer sex is normal. Or if not normal, at least not totally uncommon. OK, maybe it is just me.

In that vein, I offer the following.

I Think I Should Have Loved You Presently

I think I should have loved you presently,
And given in earnest words I flung in jest;
And lifted honest eyes for you to see,
And caught your hand against my cheek and breast;
And all my pretty follies flung aside
That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,
Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,
Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.
I, that had been to you, had you remained,
But one more waking from a recurrent dream,
Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,
And walk your memory’s halls, austere, supreme,
A ghost in marble of a girl you knew
Who would have loved you in a day or two.