The wait

Next to the cobbled path
Where the host of vivid lilies
Crave for autumn’s rain,

On the crackled, battered soil
As the spider black and red
Ponders in its web
Ways to tempt the beetle
Screaming
Incessantly, busy.

There –
In the mist of the
Breathing swamp
Bathed in the opaque fog
She lies
And waits,
For years,
For a lost knight on his horse
To gallop into her land,
Mistakenly.

Her ears asleep but keen
To detect the sound of hoofs
Against the solid stones ,
Like music,
To wake her
Once again,

So she can celebrate
Life.

-- Fariel Shafee