An aspen or
two hundred and fifty blurred nymphae,
of these I dream in a coarse habit
and wake gasping,
convinced of the withering performed
by dew and a thousand sediments.
Shaken roughly at matins,
and rolling nearer the scorched logs,
you murmur sleepily, “This is only artifice.”
And adding after taking glasses
from the bedside table,
“Soon to burst above the mere:
an orange tongue of flame.”
Harrison Montgomery is an undergraduate at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. He is studying poetry and music composition and is involved with the Kenyon Review.
