My Bog Boy

My bog-boy lives out in the moors
I slip down to visit him at night
Velvet skies and crystal pricks of light covering my back
Papa would whip me with willow boughs if he saw
Mother would drag me back home
They try to keep me from my bog-boy
Call me deluded
Deranged
Mad as a March hare
Easy for them to say
They never kissed their true loves under the moonlight
Matched metacarpals with their marsh men 
Or wrapped willowy wrists around waists wasting away on wetland women
I have my bog boy
So I slip out, slog across the squelching mud
Slide to my knees to touch hands with my bog-boy
Who always reaches right back to me
Smile splitting sweet face
We like routine
Sit against the same tree
Sip the same dark root tea
I talk
No one listens as well as my bog boy
We kiss and converse and laugh well into the night
I let him return to his moor dwelling before the sun rises
And traverse back home
Wearing mud and moss, peat and pine
Salt and sage, mushrooms and mulch, lichen and lillypads
Flesh and ferns
Sinew and silt
Blueberries and bone
Mother weeps at the window when she sees me tiptoe to the back door
And father whispers to her still figure
She caressed the corpse again
Dallied with the dead
Smooched the skeleton
Cuddled the cadaver"
I didn't do anything of the sort
I met my true love in the woods
I kissed my bog body good-night