A River for Ophelia
by Danny Daw
after John Everett Millais’ “Ophelia”
In the Tate, before we are married, before
the days you are moored in our bed, I enter
another gallery, each painting a window
to another world. The crowd streams around
the room, a steady flow across the art
stacked on each wall. But I am snagged
at Millais: the gnarled log jutting out over
the river, a flower crown floating a ways below
its intended head, and the bed of moss cradling
Ophelia in a wet, soft stasis. I love this one, you
say, drifting beside me. My favorite play, too.
I do not know whether she’s held there gently,
the moss keeping her cool and still, or if the river
will soon carry her off, first behind large reeds
primed to hide her pale face before, at last,
she arrives at the point of her own discovery,
eventually pulled from the river, dried, and buried.
But the biggest questions are her hands, upturned
toward the sky, and the flowers that seem to spill
from her grip in slow succession. For whom
were you braiding the crown, Ophelia, if not
yourself? And what is it your hands drift toward?
Some days, I look out on the water and think
I see your phantom face reflected on smooth
stones, your auburn hair in a tangle of bowing
branches, the dim glow of your dress beneath
fallen petals. Some days, a line will flash in my head:
The grave’s a fine and private place… / But none…
Some days, I wake first; I roll over and embrace
you like a bed of soft moss, careful not to wake
you. I slide my hand in yours, curling my fingers
around your upturned palms. We stay like this
until the alarm rings us to the next doctor. I rest
my head on your chest, listen to the slow murmur
of rivers coursing through you, and squeeze a little
tighter to keep you from being carried away.
it's been a while since a poem brought me to tears. I cannot say enough how much this poem touches me, moves me, even without the companion visual art, which also, of course, is stunning. Thank you so much for publishing this piece.
This poem feels like someone standing in front of a painting and suddenly seeing their own love story reflected back at them.
The way the speaker pauses at Ophelia makes the moment feel intimate, almost like the painting is breathing with them.
There’s something haunting in not knowing whether she’s being held gently or slowly slipping away.
The questions about her hands and the flower crown add a quiet ache that lingers long after reading.
When the poem shifts to the person he loves, the connection feels tender and painfully real.
Her presence in the water, in the branches, in the stones it’s as if he’s afraid she might vanish.
Then the tone softens into those small, fragile moments of morning closeness.
You can feel the fear beneath the tenderness, the wish to hold on tightly enough to keep her here.
The river becomes everything that threatens to take her away illness, time, fate, the unknown.
By the end, it feels like a love poem written with devotion, fear, and a desperate kind of hope.