Garret Keizer

A FLASH OF LITHE WHITE ARMS

A flash of lithe white arms
and legs farther up the road,
quick from behind a tall hedge,
retrieving a bounce-away ball—

“Nausikaa with her white arms flashing,”
as Homer sang it nearly
three thousand years ago—

then vanishing just as quick
tells me how the myth
of nymphs began in a twilight
glimpse of skin or snatch
of distant girlish laughter

told as something magical,
if only to evoke the mere
and perfect original.

from THE WORLD PUSHES BACK (Texas Review Press, 2019) © Garret Keizer

Author: Garret Keizer

Garret Keizer is a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine and Virginia Quarterly Review and the author of eight books of prose, most recently of Getting Schooled and Privacy.  His poems have appeared in AGNI, The Antioch Review, Harvard Review, The Hudson Review, The New Yorker, and Ploughshares, among others.  He lives with his wife in northeastern Vermont.

Plume: Issue #92 April 2019