when discouragement and solitude seem more than I can bear.
I know exactly what I’m seeking—
my seven brothers, transformed, cast out, and lost.
And I will find them. But I wonder at what cost.
HER journey continues
She walks ever on
Dusk after dusk
Dawn after dawn
She sleeps in the hay mounds
She eats what she finds
The road is a serpent
It twists and unwinds
She meets fellow travelers
The migrating throng
Each one is a question
A riddle a song
The scofflaw the sheriff
The pimp and the whore
The lover the hater
The tinker and more
The wounded crusader
The healthy the lame
Where are my brothers
Each answer’s the same
Your brothers have vanished
They live in the trees
Gone in the dream-space
Like all memories
Our beaks pierce the clouds
Our talons are skewers
We scream in our sorrow
Each day is a misery
Each night is a torment
Cruel memory haunts us
Our heartbeats and marrow
Are phantoms that taunt us
Each tongue a defector
Betraying the songs
We once harmonized
Familiars of witches
We sully the skies
ROBYN
My brothers’ pain is sharper, hotter, greater
than my own. Back then, when I was still
a boy, every muscle, every vein,
every heavy bone felt wrong. Every tree,
every stone, every table, every chair,
even the very air I breathed, whispered,
You don’t belong. My brothers yearn to be
the way they were before. What I have come
to love they disparage and deplore. They
miss their glory days and cry out for what
they’ve lost. But the sympathetic sun or
winter’s tender frost on my unclothed and
feathered back bring in turn a comfort and
a thrill. I love my shining blackness, my
feathered legs, my bill, and especially
my wings, like strong and steady oars, dipping
in the ocean of the wide and boundless
sky. When I fly above the earth, from
my vantage in the consecrated blue,
it helps me understand that everything
depends upon a changing point of view.
The house that seems so large below appears
so small above. Could this be true, I ask
myself, with all we hate and love?
AND the fields dream of rain
In their untroubled beds
And the boulders awake
And the grass lifts its head
And the bashful trees blush
And the streams and the hills
And the moss and the brush
Each sing a hymn
To each root and each trunk
And each leaf and each limb
And the vines and the saplings
Take in the bright air
And the pond shouts its name
And the mud drops its shame
And the nettles rejoice
And the pebble that’s never
Been known finds its voice
APRIL
Every traveler I meet is a story
of anguish and joy, rancor and grace,
as if each soul is a repertory
of heartbreak and redemption. On each face
I see imprinted the indelible design
of a life’s topography. Will that be true of mine
when I conclude what I’ve set out to do?
I think it must be so. For I’ve become a story too.
With each stony hill I climb, with every twist and bend
through sweeping unnamed forests, menacing and dense,
I leave behind my former self. My childish innocence
is fading, coming to its end.
Perhaps my brothers’ story is not so strange.
Of only one thing am I certain: Life is change.
AND on the road
A withered crone
Pale of flesh
And frail of bone
Ignored by all
Underfed
Thin as a ghost
She is invisible to most
She looks each traveler
In the eye
They look away
They pass her by
Afraid her future
Is their own
Afraid of what
Her face has shown
Afraid their lives
Will be impacted
Afraid that they
Will be distracted
From their longings
From their missions
From their dreams
From their ambitions
But there is one
Who puts aside
Her own desires
Her urgent needs
She kneels beside
The outcast one
In the dust and dirt
And weeds
APRIL
The beldam asks me for a crust of bread
so quietly, I barely hear her speak.
Her poverty fills me with a choking dread,
on the road alone, so frail, so old and weak.
I share my loaf. She eats, and while I wait
I ask myself, Is this to be my fate?
To wander lost for all eternity
until my strength has fled, deserted me?
But in a voice that seems to find its youth
she tells me of a king she says will know
where my brothers are, and oh,
it has the certain ring of truth.
Help has arrived from the least expected,
from the untouchable, the wretched and neglected.
THE CRONE
Beware, you busy ones who pass me by as if I were
nothing more than dust to be despised or, worse, to be
dismissed. But I am more than meets the eye. Your
smug and sanctimonious disgust keeps you from the
help you most need to enlist.
* * *
Though all I whisper in your ear is true, truth’s not
always evident or just; sometimes it’s brutal as a fist.
You scratch your head. You wonder what to do.
* * *
You have no choice. You must persist.
SHE walks through tight valleys
The valleys sink deeper
She climbs treeless mountains
The mountains grow steeper
The moors become colder
The woodlands grow older
Sleet pummels her face
Her neck and her shoulders
Her legs bruised and heavy
She crosses high bridges
Thick levees and dams
She sleeps with the cattle
The goats and the lambs
Thorns tear and scratch
And nettles they sting
No ease and no respite
On the path to the king
The wind in her face
Is hard as a stone
She has no one to guide her
But she’s never alone
APRIL
No matter how far I have traveled,
at the close of every day,
though my courage has unraveled,
I take out my harp and play,
and for a brief time, I am restored
by its spirited arpeggios and pacifying chords.
This harp has been my sole comp
anion
on high and rocky cliffs, through barren, desert canyons.
It is a loyal friend and a vital part of me,
as essential to my being as the beating of my heart.
In its strings, its overtones, its art,
I feel the powerful vibrations of my destiny.
I have many days to travel before I see the king.
But when I reach my destination, I’ll play for him and sing.
The noise of these woods
Grates and unsettles
The howl of the wolf
The huff of the bear
There is no joy
No solace there
The banshee winds
In the suffering trees
Where is the comfort
To be found in these
Our own raucous croaking
And coughing and cawing
And clicking and choking
And rasping revoking
The soft memory
Of the sad lilting airs
Our mother once sang
Now displaced by the wildwood’s
Strident harangue
ROBYN
What my brothers call brash clamor and harsh
cacophony, I consider calming
music and sweetest harmony. The low
and moving plainsong of the sacred streams,
the a cappella carol of the trees,
the mockingbird’s hijacked motifs and themes,
the lyric humming of the choral bees
are to me the most melodic sounds. If
I should be compelled to make a choice, I
would choose these untamed fugues, descants, and rounds
over any manmade instrument or
strident human voice. But sometimes when I’m
winging through the clouds, I hear, not floating
on the air but harshly piercing it, a
maid’s high, impassioned singing. And
clinging like a leech to this high, unwelcome
song is that same unlit suspicion—
something’s very, very wrong. Just as in
our nightly keep, I feel a deep and
cataclysmic change is on the way. How is
it possible I know this? I cannot
say. But I have learned at last to trust my
intuition. It might be tomorrow.
It could be today. And there is nothing
I can do to prevent it or prepare.
I have only one refuge: The steady
sky, the loving air. And so I spread my
wings and fly, mile on unmapped
mile, and force myself to let the feeling
go, if only for a while.
APRIL
I see them in a vision almost every night,
my mother in the garden, my father in the forest,
each standing in a dreamed and shadowed light,
both suffering silently, heartbroken and depressed.
They struggle through their day-to-day routine.
Not knowing where I am or where I’ve been
has caused their hearts to break. Fraught
with guilt, they regret how earnestly they taught
me to do always the right thing.
But it was only empty talk, a figure of speech.
Parents should be careful about what they teach;
no one can predict the trouble it might bring.
I will always be their daughter, but I will never be the same.
There is nothing to forgive. There is no one to blame.
JACK
With every step I miss my daughter.
She’s in the air I breathe, the water
that I drink, the meat and bread I eat.
Nothing can be whole, nothing complete,
every day a meaningless repeat
of the sorry day that came before.
The future is but a bolted door
until the time I see her again.
What a tribulation this has been.
We should be a family of ten.
My wife, my sons, my daughter, and me.
A proper size for a family.
But it’s only us, just us, just two.
If only I could go back, undo
the curse, begin again, start anew,
I’d work to be more understanding,
less critical and less demanding
of all my boys, including Robyn.
Let him walk the path untrodden.
JANE
How easy it is for him—regret;
how hard it is for me to forget.
Because of him, I have lost them all.
My children now? Anger and Gall.
I have tried so often to recall
our greener, younger, happier days.
But they are gone, lost in a rank maze
of resentment and acrimony.
I don’t know what has happened to me.
I used to be so light and carefree.
But losing your children changes you.
Your life is suddenly turned askew.
There is no good reason to go on.
Every morning is gray; every dawn
screams: Your children are gone.
I know only, as long as I live,
I won’t forget. I won’t forgive.
Until all my children have returned,
he’ll have to live with what he has earned.
SHE enters a desert
The hot wind is blowing
The ember sky glowing
The hungry sand flowing
Like rivers with banks
Neither constant nor firm
The serpents are singing
The scorpion’s stinging
The vultures are winging
The insect and worm
Torment and hector
Mirages and specters
Deceive and confuse
But she perseveres
Through danger through tears
Despite her young years
She has refused
To surrender her quest
She longs to know what
The future might bring
And puts all her hope
In the all-knowing king
THE KING
The adders, lizards, and the roaches
are hissing that a girl approaches.
The maid must be in deep despair
to face this desert’s burning air,
these howling winds, these shifting sands,
these desiccated shadowlands.
They say she seeks the disappeared,
brothers who were commandeered
by some unnatural wizardry,
an equalizing sorcery
that captured them, then set her free.
But does she know what I’m king of?
King of Kindness?
King of Love?
King of Hope?
King of Desire?
King of Judgment?
King of Fire?
King of Laughter?
King of Dance?
King of Lust?
Or Abstinence?
King of Peace?
King of War?
So many kings to bow before.
When she arrives and bends her knee,
to which of these kings shall it be?
Her coming here was bold but rash,
for I am only King of Ash,
desert where there once was sea,
the Monarch of Despondency.
APRIL
This landscape is foreboding, stark and bare,
its shrieking wind ferocious. How it stings!
I see no living creature anywhere.
But deserts, too, I know, must have their kings.
This barren land is where my way has led,
but I have faith in what might lie ahead.
The crone would not have sent me here
if I had anything to fear.
She said he knows the
place my brothers dwell,
that hermitage impossible to find.
He is a king: I know he will be kind
when he hears the tale I have to tell.
My legs are weak. My heart is beating fast.
Injustice will be rectified at last.
THE KING
Once I had dreams. They shined like gold.
Once I was young. Now I am old.
Dreams transform from gold to lead.
Once they lived. Now they are dead.
I do know where her brothers dwell;
I know, yes, but will not tell.
When all is said, when all is done,
why give her hope when I have none?
AND the snakes bite their tails
And the empty wind wails
And the moon turns her back
And the earth starts to crack
And the sun screams and burns
And the pines and the oaks
And the moss and the ferns
Far from the desert
Wither and die
While the wasp the mosquito
The pestilent fly
And the death-hungry vulture
Take to the sky
APRIL
I come to him a supplicant, pleading, kneeling,
but asking for so little.
What bitter disappointment makes him so unfeeling,
so weak, so cruel and brittle,
that he knows but will not share where to find my brothers?
He whispers it is childish to care about the suffering of others,
that all is only barren stone and sterile dust.
When I tell him he is wrong, as I know I must,
a fearful thing occurs that I do not understand:
The sky above me shakes, the earth beneath me rumbles,
and with a dreadful sigh he collapses, crumbles
into a lifeless, windblown pile of desert sand.
I have never felt more frightened or alone.
Why did I dare to trust that deceiving, ancient crone?
THE CRONE
I did not say the king would tell her what he knew.
Poor girl! Her memory deceives, but as so often with
the immature, she heard exactly what she wanted to,
and so to soothe herself she believes I lied to her.