Girl In A Bottle Poem by James Walter Orr

On the garden path, walks alone a girl.
Each step makes apparent her slender grace.
She stops where the cool fountain waters swirl,
With a tranquil look on her lovely face.
She disrobes and bathes in the crystal pool,
With never a thought, that there lurks near-by,
A Sorcerer with the face of a ghoul,
And her perfect image is in his eye.

With the carefree air of a doe at play,
She turns her face up to the cloudless sky,
And the crystal drops of the fountain’s spray,
To touch her soft skin seems to always vie.
Rivulets of water cascading down,
Through the downy cover between her thighs,
Are clothing her form with a glowing gown:
Mesmerizing hearts, paralyzing eyes.

The sorcerer sees, with a heart of lust,
A body that shines like the very sun.
Each breath she draws, raises her shapely bust.
He knows he is seeing a special one.
The fountain was wetting her full, sweet lips;
The water curved in a miniature stream,
Where it flowed from her waist over her hips,
And was channeled in through a place of dreams.

The water that flows down her long, wet hair,
Makes the most perfect form of waterfall.
The fine spray that touches and fogs the air,
Makes a rainbow’s arc that encloses all.
The girl’s own handmaiden comes down the path.
The sorcerer knows it is time to go.
The girl is preparing to end her bath,
When the fountain’s water begins to glow.

The handmaiden rounds the green leafy hedge,
Just to see her mistress fading from sight,
In the glow surrounding the fountain’s edge
Some powerful force now subdues the light.
The girl then steps out of the fountain’s spray,
Picks up her towel and begins to dry.
Something seems so strange in the waning day,
But all seems in place to her roving eye.

Each flagstone appears in its normal place,
As does every petal on every rose.
The same sun shines down on her own same face.
She feels not a hint of the breeze that blows.
The dim twilight falls and the sun goes down,
Across the valley, all green with the crops.
She lifts her eyes toward the distant town.
Her eyes open wide and the towel drops.

A wilderness lies where the valley lay,
And she looks in the distance, all around.
The garden, itself, where the song birds play,
And sing their songs is still filled with their sound,
But there, at the edge of her garden’s grass,
So clear that at first it can not be seen,
Is a wall made of clearest, curving glass,
That’s completely and absolutely clean.

She runs to the wall, ‘till she has to stop:
She feels the wall, it is no illusion.
Her garden has moved to a mountain top;
Her mind is filled with extreme confusion.
A sound from behind now her senses probe.
She spins around quickly, and there beholds,
The sorcerer, garbed in a long white robe:
A star and half moon on the wand he holds.

With lust in his eyes, and lips in a sneer,
He looks at her nude body, head to toe.
She knows that she is nude, and feels some fear.
She looks around, but there’s no place to go.
Before she can shield herself from his eyes,
He puts out his hands and he cups her breasts.
She flings his hands from her as she defies,
His brazen advances, which she detests.

Slowly he raises his skinny right arm.
He points at a spot far above his head.
The girl looks up, with a greater alarm,
And listens to everything that he said.
'That thing you see is the cork, far above,
That fastens you here in your bottle home.
When you vow to me your eternal love,
I will take the cork from your glassed in dome.'

The sun now comes up on another day,
And the captive girl must assess anew,
If she will discover a secret way;
Escape and go back to the life she knew.
Now she is corked under a bottle's dome,
With gardens of roses to fill her time,
But no way to leave her transparent home,
With roses of yellow and red and lime.

Though she has the beauty of every rose
To carry her through each long day and night,
The dream of her freedom breaks her repose
And dampens what might have been her delight.
She's captured, without the power to leave
And enter the wide world that looms outside.
As each bird soars freely, it makes her grieve,
And she often thinks of the times she's cried.

Those on the outside can see her within,
Bathed in the flowers' incomparable scent;
Separated from all her friends and kin,
Like a captive bird, with her spirit spent.
She looks at the freedom outside her wall,
Where a wild bird sings from her leafy perch,
And sends out the clearest and sweetest call,
From her spot on a bough of breeze-swept birch.

She looks out one day on an errant knight,
With his armor all shiny in the sun.
His coat of arms carries a hawk, in flight.
He rides up the path on a black maned dun.
The strange coat of arms on his mirrored shield,
Shows the hawk with an olive branch, borne high,
While his other talons, a sword does wield,
As he soars aloft in his mirrored sky.

The dragon that guards where the bottle’s kept,
Raises slavering jaws, and soot-stained head,
And the mountain trembles each time he stepped,
And even the trees bowed themselves in dread.
The girl in the bottle turned pale with fear,
As the flame from the dragon’s fetid breath
Set the grasses smoking in places near,
And the air was heavy with smells of death.

The knight comes to the path that scales the peak,
As the dragon, watching, lashes his tail.
The knight watches one moment, looking bleak,
And turning, retreats down the stony trail.
With a billow of fire to speed the knight,
The dragon turns back to his bed of stone.
Mary's hopeful eyes lose their gleam of light,
And she cannot restrain a hopeless groan.

While starting to swivel away her eyes,
She sees the knight stop at the flowing stream.
He soaks his bedroll, as the dragon lies,
Watching what passes in the sun's last beam.
Wet bedding soon covers the horse's head,
Which comes up the path at a rapid run.
The dragon he meets near its stony bed,
While a cloud of smoke covers up the sun.

The breeze, dissipating the smoky cloud,
Lets the girl look on with a failing heart.
The knight lies in the path, no longer proud,
And the dragon slumps, his chest cut apart.
The sorcerer comes in a puff of light,
With a magical sword in his right hand,
And raises the sword with a great delight,
But a thrashing tail knocks him to the sand.

In death's final throes, the sorcerer groans;
As each groan sounds, he loses a feature.
The whole glass wavers and the bottle moans.
The mountain howls like a living creature.
Each image changes into blurs and waves,
And far more indistinct, each one becomes:
Mirages in deserts, phantoms in caves,
Time passed from nightmares and distance from drums.

The girl falling into a coma, deep,
Has her garden merged with the mountain breeze.
The world, for that moment, fell fast asleep,
While the very air has a sense of ease.
From her fountain spray bath, the girl steps out.
Her handmaiden dries off her dripping back.
On the fountain's edge, she looks all about,
And watches the sun dry each bare-foot track.

She seems in some strange world of deja vu,
Like awakening from some mid-day nap,
With a sense of loss assailing her, too,
As though something, once gained, now left a gap.
A dull lassitude and desire for sleep,
Sends her to the room, where her bed is kept,
And this time, her sleep was so sound and deep,
That she never knew how she dreamed and wept.

Awaking from sleep with an empty heart,
And melancholy, but knowing not why,
She seeks her garden, and walking apart,
Recalling her strange dream, she starts to cry.
Vaguely she knows she has faced great danger.
Fresh in her mind is the thought of a knight,
Giving his life, though only a stranger:
Riding to death when he first saw her plight.

Seating herself in front of her fountain,
She looks across the valley toward town,
And saw a flash, from there near the mountain,
Where the path crosses the creek that comes down.
The bee's drowsy buzz is hypnotizing,
Trying to lull her into a deep sleep.
The flowers' scent is so appetizing:
Yet her pleasures are never very deep.

Something gnaws at her heart with growing pain;
Emotions she has never before known.
The flash from before, she now sees again;
How much closer and larger it has grown!
Each flash seems as bright as the noon-day sun,
And prevents her eyes a more direct view.
She looks at her roses, and one by one,
Delights in their every shade and hue.

She looks down again, on an errant knight,
With his armor all shiny in the sun.
His coat of arms carries a hawk, in flight.
He rides up the path on a black maned dun.
The strange coat of arms on his mirrored shield,
Shows the hawk with an olive branch, borne high,
While his other talons, a sword does wield,
As he soars aloft in his mirrored sky.