* * *
But I know where her true path lies, if only she will
listen and believe. The choice is hers; the outcome is
unsure. Next time, she will find me in disguise.
* * *
Will she endure?
SHE walks through the seasons
The hot stone of summer
Its breath suffocates her
The oxblood of autumn
It curdles and stains
The phantoms of winter
They shriek and bedevil
The hornets of spring
They needle her pain
Where are her brothers
How long must she wander
What more must she suffer
What more must she give
Where are the boys
Whose cruel transformation
Whose truncated lives
Allowed her to live
Our feathers are pinpricks
Our wings aberrations
Our beaks angry thorns
Our language is death
Can nobody help us
Restore and redeem us
Let us dream human dreams
Let us breathe human breath
ROBYN
We live a dream, or so it seems to me,
and breathe the breath of rampant liberty.
APRIL
I have heard persistent rumors of a mighty queen,
a ruler of philosophers and fools.
They say her palace is of tourmaline
and her throne of idols’ pearls and stolen jewels.
The monarch of all prescient winds that blow,
there is nothing she can’t see or doesn’t know.
Even now I’m headed toward that fearful place.
I’ll humbly kneel before her. I’ll boldly plead my case.
That so-called desert king of emptiness and pain—
could she be worse? I’ve seen how heartless men can be.
But what has that to do with me?
Let her show me her contempt, her scorn, and her disdain.
I will not stop until my brothers’ mystery is solved.
The more that I am tested, the more I am resolved.
THE CRONE
That rumor—where did it originate? What set it floating
through the air to reach the young girl’s waiting ear?
Was it accident? Or was it fate? It’s a mysterious affair—
the things that come to us, the things we hear.
* * *
She thinks her choices are her own, unenlightened,
unaware of forces from another sphere, enigmatic and
unknown.
* * *
Invisible. But always near.
AND the air is a blade
And the girl is the stone
On which it is sharpened
Polished and honed
And snowflakes like pebbles
They sting as they pelt
And nothing will give
And nothing will melt
And the snow it is drifting
And the faithless ice shifting
And the world has gone white
And even the night
Cannot put on its mantle
APRIL
When, like today, the ice and snow are deep,
when the air is cruel and slaps and bites and stings,
when the forward way slows me to a creep,
I turn my mind to more congenial things
and think about my seven brothers.
Their father is my father, their mother, my mother,
so I wonder if they are at all like me.
And I think of Robyn especially.
They told me he was different from the rest.
But it was difficult to know their exact intent.
Sensitive—I think that’s what they meant,
but there was so much they were unwilling to express.
If true, his torment must be worse.
Oh, what a happy day when I free him from the curse.
ROBYN
I know there must be things I miss about
my former life, but if so, they are too
distant to recall. What I remember
most? The days rife with anxiety, the
fear, all the confusion. What did I want?
What was wrong with me? At the exclusion
of my own happiness, I ached for dull
normality. I regret that I was
not more courageous then. But that was in
the past. I will not be so timorous again.
As for now, of only one thing am I
morning light, or when evening drops her
cobalt velvet curtain, there is no wrong;
there is only right. Each feather is a
shining dusky mirror, reflecting all
there is in opalescent black. Look
carefully! It could not be clearer:
The beauty of the world shines on my back.
AND nothing can live
And nothing can die
She is struggling through
The inside of an eye
Desolation before her
Blankness behind
An eye that’s polluted
An eye that is blind
And just when despair
And surrender convene
She comes to the place
Of the boreal queen
THE QUEEN
My cunning winds, cold and conniving,
are telling me a girl’s arriving.
Fair of form and fair of face,
she’s journeyed to this northern place
to ask me for some help she needs.
She hopes that I will intercede
to break an unjust conjury.
What nerve! What rash audacity!
To find her way here, uninvited,
through this landscape, frigid, blighted—
cracking ice and blinding snow.
* * *
This is, I think, a girl to know.
* * *
Courageous, filled with confidence,
more than her share of impudence—
her coming here is proof of that.
To brave this daunting habitat
she must be strong, unstoppable,
tenacious, bright, formidable,
with inner fire, ferocity.
She is, in fact, a girl like me.
Oh, this will be her lucky day.
I’m searching for a protégé.
APRIL
Her palace is not tourmaline but gold,
with tall and pointed spires of platinum
and every priceless thing that loves the cold.
The hall sits like a lustrous diadem,
rising from a flat and treeless plain,
surrounded by a moat, completely drained
and tiled with images of beasts in abalone,
then filled to near the top with rare and precious stones—
rubies, emeralds, sapphires, jade,
carnelians, jaspers, peridots—
jumbled all together like discarded thoughts
that once were welcomed, then betrayed.
I know I should feel wonder, but instead
I quake at its frigidity. I’m filled with icy dread.
THE QUEEN
What does the girl have to fear?
There’s nothing that will harm her here.
She is misguided, young, naïve.
I simply want to help relieve
her of her sentiment.
The feeling heart’s a detriment
and sure to lead to bleak regret.
I will teach her to forget
her hapless brothers.
All that is past,
for nothing which is mortal lasts.
Far better to embrace the art
of loving that which has no heart—
silver, platinum, garnet, gold.
The love that they give back is cold,
but being so, it cannot burn.
It asks for nothing in return.
Always constant, always true,
lapis will be always blue.
No other colors ‘neath its skin.
No treason hiding deep within.
Once there lived a handsome prince
who wooed a maid and soon convinced
her to concede him all:
her heart, her soul, her bed, her hall.
She did not know it was a game.
He left her with remorse and shame.
She trusted love and paid the price.
Her heart contracted, turned to ice,
and taught the maid what it had learned:
The love that’s true is love that’s spurned.
BIRDS drop from the trees
And the sap starts to freeze
And each leaf is a blade
And the deer in the shade
Cannot move cannot run
Cannot lift her head
And the fawn in her womb
Shudders once
And is dead
APRIL
With viper eyes, she tells me I must sever
all family ties, all connection,
now, completely and forever.
And if to this profane defection
I will bind myself and swear,
I will, in time, become her heir
and so receive as my reward
her frozen realm, her golden horde.
She shuts her eyes. She whispers, Trust me.
She is both angry and confused
when I shrink back, when I refuse
and tell her that such thoughts disgust me.
I run and leave her there alone.
When I look back, she turns to stone.
AND hope is a country
Whose shoreline recedes
And hope is a garden
Blooming with weeds
Hope is a journey
Into the night
No guiding star
No comforting light
And hope is a paradox
Cousin to dread
And hope is cool water
And hope is warm bread
Hope is a burden
Unwieldy its load
And hope is a stranger
She meets on the road
APRIL
It is impossible for me to know her age,
as if she is both old and young, plain and fair.
She says that she has found me to assuage
my pain. She blinks her eyes and tells me where
my brothers are. In a mountain made of glass,
there is a door through which I have to pass.
It is here, at end of every day,
she swears my seven brothers find their way.
She hands me a pocket made of silk,
which holds the key to the mountain’s door.
There has never been such a key before,
carved from chicken bone, and white as whitest milk.
She promises that all will be restored, the curse at last suspended,
that my wandering is over, my trials finally ended.
THE CRONE
Old or young or fair or plain. Future, past, or present
tense. Eclipsed moon or shining sun. The everyday
or the arcane. Gold or myrrh or frankincense. I am all
of these, and none.
* * *
She has persisted and transcended all hardships and
impediments. Her journey now is nearly done.
Yes, all her trials soon will be ended—
* * *
all of them but one.
IV
CHANGE
APRIL
Can it be real that it’s coming to an end?
By tomorrow at the latest I’ll arrive.
Thanks to that kind and unknown friend,
the adversities and hurdles that contrived
to hold me back are now behind me.
I’ll have only my memories to remind me
of all the difficulties suffered through.
Now I have just one task left to do:
unlock the mountain’s door
and free them from their misery.
The stranger said that when they see
that I have come, they’ll instantly transform to the way they were before.
I will love them all. I know that’s true.
But I’m sure it will be Robyn who I’ll be closest to.
ROBYN
I have been thinking of the past and all
I would do differently if it were
possible that I could. There was so much
about myself I didn’t know, so much
I misunderstood, like that day I saw
the wakeful shadow standing near my un-
born sister’s cradle, the forceful way it
stared at me, demanding my attention.
How frightened I was then and how badly
shaken. But my fear and apprehension
were almost comically mistaken. I
was not in the grim presence of a low
and evil envoy from the land of the
unliving. That opaque and moving shade
was the essence of a raven, giving
me a gift, a glimpse of what was yet to
be. It had not come for the baby,
but was there instead for me. How strange that
memory moves so freely through the
corridors of time. That baby’s but an
actor in a distant pantomime, and
insignificant to me. The trees,
the streams, the hidden glades are now my
family. I have no need for more, nor
do I pine for any other. My father is
the steadfast sun, the watchful moon my
mother.
AND the road is a ribbon
Shining and straight
And the road is her guide
And her friend and her fate
And the road is a dove
Spreading its wings
And her hands are wild roses
When she plays on her harp
And she sings and she sings
She sings of the cottage
The axe and the hen
A mother and father
The shocking day when
Her brothers the Seven
Were cruelly exiled
And she sings of her journey
Each altering mile
And she sings of a king
Whose kingdom was Grief
And she sings of a queen
Whose only belief
Was in what she could own
And she sings of a stranger
And she sings of a crone
And she sings of a key
Fashioned from bone
What is that soothing melody
We hear
That human voice so loving
And so clear
Whose timbre and whose humble
Eloquence
Recall our cherished mother’s
Resonance
How is it that this soulful air
Comes winging
To this drear and melancholy
Place
Why do those harp strings and
That singing
Alleviate our pain and
Our disgrace
What is that soothing melody
We hear
That human voice so loving
And so dear
ROBYN
What is that human melody I hear,
unnatural in this wild and sacred place?
It fills me with that same recurring fear.
Too soon I’ll have to face the foreboding
premonition hiding deep within my
chest. It warns me of a stranger with a
single-minded mission, and a dreadful
change about to manifest. There is no
choice. I want to fly away, but to the
mountain made of glass I must return by
end of day. I can’t escape the feeling
that all is fated. My present joy will
soon be devastated. But whatever
lies ahead, this raven life has taught me
what it feels like to be free. There is no
going back. I will not give that up so
easily.
AND the nightingale calls
In the fickle moon’s light
And the mountain is shining
Translucent and bright
Inside are the brothers
Six and one more
April arrives
She stands at the door
SHE stands at the door
Not as she expected
She stands at the door
Crushed and dejected
She stands at the door
Alone and depleted
She stands at the door
Lost and defeated
She stands at the door
Weak of heart weak of knee
The door will not open
She has lost the bone key
THE CRONE
I’ve brought her here. I’ll do no more. There is a choice
that she must make. The time has come; I’ll disappear,
go back to what I was before, sleeping and awake.
* * *
My work for now is finally done. I leave her waiting
on the shore with everything at stake. Like all of us,
like everyone,
* * *
she stands at the door.
APRIL