R is for Ravishing

For the month of April I will be taking part in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. I will be using two tools besides my trusty computer - my imagination and my dictionary -The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition.. I will turn to the letter of the day, flip the pages and let my fickle finger of fate find the word. Then I'll write - might be a story, might be a rant, might be a poem. Who knows! Do let me know what you think. To go to the list of other participants go here - There's a heck of a lot of blogs and there are many more signed up below me. If you make a comment I will do my darnedest to check out your blog and comment. Spread the love around!

Ravishing adj. Entrancing

 

Such a bizarre word - to ravish means to seize and carry away by force, or to rape, or to be overwhelmed by emotion. Yet if we say someone is ravishing - we mean I guess that we have been carried away by the force of their looks. We've been tranced. Don't you just love words? Of course you do!

The world of you

This world that I thought I wanted to enter - this world of you -

was different than what I thought, what you promised.

I was a simple girl, who kept my mind on my stitches, aware of my duty to family

and village. You were a visitor, a vagabond, a musician -

one we had not met in years past.

Oh, you said, the old one died and he told me of his routes.

We wondered, as the one we remembered, with his fulsome stories

and crazy laugh,

had not seemed so old to us.

But we put that thought aside and let you sing by our fire,

partake of our meat and drink,

and sleep in the tent of my father.

I woke mid-night to see you above me, your face close

and your breath upon me.

Come, you said, I will show you the river at night,

how the moonlight dances and the trees sough and sigh

in the wind.

I followed you out into that shadow world

and now, full twenty years since,

knowing that you lied and took me for

the goods my father would give you

for my return, I know

I would follow you again.

This time I would give you what you did not ask for

in return for that moon world

you offered so freely.