Adam Fieled (Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, USA): "Wayfaring Angel"

Visions of jungle, elephants doze;
     tigers are slumberous, spiders repose
before any human can frighten their nose.

She’s on a bender, peyote & grass;
     spirits defend her, karma amassed;
astonishing yogis, the head of her class.

The temple was gold, ceiling a dome;
    hid in the hills, she found me alone;
a wayfaring straggler, rough skin & bone.

Struggle like death, hours went on;
    run out of breath, night into dawn;
entwined in a web— consummation— then gone.

She was still high, I watched her evoke
    Gods of the jungle, deities spoke
exhorting this princess, before she awoke

to lead me to reason, why she was here;
    guide me past shyness, chide me past fear;
bedraggle not ever what must be made clear.

How I was chosen, she tried to explain;
    clipped not by coyness, confusion, or pain;
yet all I could see was her flesh in my brain—

solid like marble, snow-white & smooth,
     I placed my hands on, couldn’t remove
while she dealt the dharma, was peaking to prove

that now she’d achieved this peak of her dream;
     now what was woven wouldn’t show seams;
the Wayfaring Angel I’d been was her means.

© Adam Fieled 2020-2025

The ballad Wayfaring Angel appeared originally in Otoliths 57 in 2020.