Daphne and Apollo
At the end of the pursuit
is a reversal:
set down
upon the earth at last,
she takes root,
splinters
into branch and leaf,
her shape turning lush,
verdant and immortal.
Abandoned
to the windy fill
of his arms,
he clutches at damp sod,
breathes in such loss,
and snaps off
bright sprigs of her hair
to weave them
into his own.
In the heart
of the wood,
a god learns too late:
love transforms
never quite in one way.
The one who loves
survives, remembers
in his solitude
his body's dark
sorrow.
The one loved,
slight and always fleeing,
lets fly a light-borne wish
to the air,
and painlessly escapes
into another beauty:
a new lover
or a tree.
-J. Neil C. Garcia,
from The Sorrows of Water
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