Lantry, W.F.

Issue 66, Fall 2021

A Charm

By W.F. Lantry

When you enchanted me, your flowing dress

was everything I knew of heaven. When

you moved through snow and rounded drifts, I knew

a warmth I hadn’t understood before,

not even in the summer, when vines grew

a foot each day, their tendrils twisting, then

turning toward the sun, as if to catch

my hands, entangle both my arms, attach

my spirit, clockwise, to their trellis frame

in August. But the winter frees us all,

and even winds in swirling may restore

a crystalline charisma, and recall,

as if in warmth, the meaning of a name

you whispered almost silently, or cast

as naked invocation, unsurpassed

by any chant or song I might invent

while dreaming of your silk or cashmere, drawn

in memory. I wanted to explore

just then, those ripples, curving, touching on

the images I hoped to represent

in words beyond the phrases I possess.

W.F. Lantry spent many years gardening in his native San Diego and in the South of France. Currently he lives in the frozen North of DC. His full-length collections are: The Structure of Desire (Little Red Tree), winner of a 2013 Nautilus Award, and The Terraced Mountain (Little Red Tree). Honors include National Hackney Literary Award, Lindberg Foundation International Poetry for Peace Prize (Israel), CutBank Patricia Goedicke Prize, Crucible Editors’ Prize, Old Red Kimono Paris Lake Poetry Prizeand Potomac Review Prize. He edits Peacock Journal.