so you lost your way
For generations your bodies have only known the moon
for navigation
and the stories take so long to change
❦
Buried alive beneath the snow and leaf litter
your genes blazed their way through winter
dissolving your digestive system
building reproductive magic in its place
until the summer night crooned you awake
From the last of your births —
your final magnificent decay
you emerged the color of a yellow moon
elegantly furred and feathered
to the ancient family of royal night sky sailors
You no longer have the choice to eat and remain
You breathe only
to hunt for a female in whose flame-bright wings
you could burn
to gift the sky to a new generation
Tonight you must fly or fail
❦
Time consumes all things but it is
the children who are lost
in an age of lights that are not moons
You have been led off course
the secret cargo of your progeny
abandoned in our sheds, adrift in our nights
Such a short, precious time we are given
I walk on the mountain as the dusk flutters down
wash my hands and face in the offering pool
and ask forgiveness
The Ladies
One always arrives first and
lets the others know
Scrutinizes the preferred patch of weeds
sauntering over and back
graaack-graaacking mildly
but at consequential volume
I crack one eye to peer at the clock
resolve a five and wish for a six
She trumpets censoriously and
I put a pillow over my head
By six the ladies have all arrived
and are well into session
peaceably and resonantly reporting
the placid happenings
of their morning so far
and yesterday's, this week's
the summer's
so far, again
in serenely coarse splats and
gobbets of repartee and remark
sleek black plumes ruffling
over such delectable palaver
outraged not one bit
I have coffee
finally
and walk down barefoot
to let out my little dog
who races down
and bothers them
not one bit
although they have lusty and
stentorian comments —
offspring running
uncivilized through the place —
And when it is time, not before
the ladies will rise with pomp
piercing skaaarcks and gabbles
and leave the floor to the
silly wrens
and finches
III. Star-Swallowing
Seven League Boots
In fourth grade I learned the beauty standard
as we stood in a tight circle, one foot in
to be strictly evaluated
Small feet, miniature steps
were to be most desired
employing the least space possible
It was best to be
hardly noticeable
And far too late for me
tallest girl taking
giant steps that made my ponytail bounce
I dreamt of wider strides still
in seven-league boots
surging across vast lands
over ogres' lairs, enchanted marshes
roofs of thatch and goats and gingerbread
across boundless black woods
With a hunger that is the beginning of everything
a body built with heft and hip, muscle and volume
prodigious baskets of provision, salt mills
magic tables laden with secrets
never ending
Feet wide and well-shod in streaming fathoms
hair raveled with clouds
a wool cape the color of spruce
shot with garnet
hawk feathers and moss
Seek your fortune
not to find princes, gold spindles, or sevens
but to feel the rooms of your story
empty, then replenish themselves
Open locked closets
chatter your stick against the fence
leave river stones upended, constellations askew
and see the shades you fear eclipsed, worn thin
and cast across the land like tenebrous blooms
known, and known, and known
You are not too hungry, generative or vast
There are never too many curiosities in your pack
Wend, wander, fly in your great boots
trailing bright streams of light, and
refuse to relinquish the sacraments
of speed, weight, and wonder
Wild Tea
Crown me with wild rampions
give me a robe of scratchy grass
and yarrow for a scepter
You shall be my knave of shovels and secrets
our joker will wear a motley of moth wings
and slime mold
How is a crow like a poem, does anyone know?
Now. We'll want tea and stones
with blueberries, if the deer have left us any
And a dappled bower
(Whatever's dappled will do
as you've always loved dappled)
I found three black shoe soles in the creek
which should serve for platters
and bee balm along the drive
May as well invite the surly toad from the spring box
but ask him to keep his voice down
and bring buttercups as
we'll be needing lots
Kittens! Clear out these mouse skeletons
before I pour
(Never mind plates for them as
they'll sleep through the rest)
Pass the milkweed, if you will
then we shall all move one place on
Bluebeard
i.
There is rot spilling down from
the eaves of the world
the landlord painted over it but
you have seen the wasps coming and going
There once was a lovely man
but strangely his footprints left behind
traces of sodium cyanide and the sweet scent
of almonds
I'm sorry you were taught to be nice —
there is much to unlearn
ii.
If you use the key and turn over the rock
cut the string around the shoebox
drop a torch into the well
If you examine false promises of freedom —
unlock any room except
eat from any tree not including
be yourself although
If you ask, expand, breathe
on the coals of your curiosity
Be ready for
shadows to deepen and multiply
blood to roar
There is nothing you may not see if you look
and one day you will tire of the knowing
The door can be shut but
the key will continue to bleed
iii.
They said it was her brothers
who saved her but
I have seen a woman laid low
by many a rattlesnake and live
It is imperative that you learn to
disobey the predator
More than one wisdom lies within you
More than one bloody key
iv.
When it's over again
hold back a p
ortion of the poison
a pinch in your pocket to keep your blood wise
a dusting to code your knowing
crumbs that once marked your pathway home
Apologies
Thank you so much for the invitation but
I have to count the leaves on the three-leaf clovers
wrinkle the periwinkle, and
repeat the day's directions to the wind
(who never listens)
Before noon I'll have oiled the salamanders
sharpened the crickets' saws
and fluffed the hummingbird hatchlings
(I go through so many cotton swabs)
I have to arbitrate between the crows
who are forever pilfering each other's teaspoons,
draw dots on the tiger lilies that haven't any
and turn down the temperature in the spring
for the crawdad boogie tonight
And by then it will be late
There's winding the bees
reminding the owls to update their journals
and new sheets of grass to be scissored
(I ordered perforated, but they're always out of stock)
Trust me, you'd be shocked
at the number of acorns
for whom I must crochet caps
(they'll all be mauve this year to avoid
the fuss over who gets what color)
And much later I'll
unplug the fireflies for the night
and set the heat lightning to intermittent
Otherwise I would love to come
Star Rise
There once was a woman who swallowed a star
That may not have been exactly what happened, but
it seemed likely something inside her collapsed, then
flashed up her bones and
light spilled from behind her teeth like
a lantern in an old barn
At night it was most strange
She lay on her back under a sapphire wheel of night
wishing to lift away but
the broomsedge and switch-grass held her with a
sharp-edged lightness and
the checkered beetles stitched down her edges
Three times she threw off her heaviest ballast —
a fourth was too much and she took it back
It mended poorly but there was nothing to be done
As the years spun she became a constellation
None of the thirteen in the daily paper
but something imperative
still streaming into place
not hydra, not maiden, not bear
but storied, certainly and
pressing, dense and luminous
In the old tale the stars
became coins and fell
But perhaps instead we open
the field of light beneath our faultlines
and let our silver rise
Earthsnake
Somewhere here there is the story of a snake
the color of a silky dirt road
a beauty of cream and brown
sinuous as a woman’s hips
sleek as your lover’s collarbone
she smells of wild sage and ancient history
she never asked for your forgiveness, and
what she longs for she never shares
just flows silently to her burrow
a river riding over stone
sand poured hand to hand
she dreams of clouds beneath her belly
and nestlings on her feathered breast
she’ll be here when you are gone
delicately tasting the green-scented air and
polishing her copper heart until it gleams
The Dirty Shepherdess
It was once said —
and it was only said once —
that I had a pretty face
Grimy and ragged, though
those words have been used plenty
and I've certainly been windburned
sweaty, and stinking more
of rotting mulch, woodsmoke, and forest cat
bread and life
a ring, a knife
salt, flour and water
I prefer practical of course
ingenious on occasion, and
I can fly like a bird when I need to
My feet are suited less for crystal slippers
than a mountain trail or stony riverbed
I can manage an ax
start a fire, scavenge shelter and
turn a loaf
I'm not above subterfuge
if it gets me further along the path
bread and life
a ring, a knife
salt, flour and water
If certain people were quicker on the uptake
outrageous hints —
a wedding feast with no salt —
would be unnecessary
And it was never true what they said
that no other woman could wear that ring
Rather than thinking what a stroke of luck
you could say what a lot of suffering
could have been avoided or
what a resourceful woman
bread and life
a ring, a knife
salt, flour and water
Would you still choose apples over salt?
Plenty of those legendary beauties are filled
with sorrow and a radically altered future
With a world at stake
a pretty face is fine but
we all need salt to live
Foundling-bird
They are not making a mistake, you know —
mothers, being sewn
into the hems of their children
A hawk's nest is never a good place to leave a child
They become yours and
you forget their wild origin,
their savage nature
It isn't long before the stitched
and restitched tether
begins to tear
Of course it hurts —
strong thread pulling against
pine needles and the small, sharp fish bones
which have become embedded over the years
Sometimes there's a sudden yank and sundering
the muscle memory of stoop and dive
a burst of feathers and warm blood
One day you look down and your heart is
terribly damaged but your own again, mostly
and will heal
If you resist becoming a rosebush, lit and gleaming
a chandelier in a church, or
a bonfire to consume the great black forest
That light only reaches the bird in
stories told by others
Instead carry water, pot by pot
powdered comfrey root and agrimony
barrel by barrel
Become a pond and when
the witch comes to drink up the water
you must drown her without hesitation
Leaving
You were born on an island
like we all were
Kept in a fur-lined nest or
locked in a windowless tower between
sky and earth
When the food runs out and darkness presses
it will break apart who you were taught to be
from who you are meant to become
You must dig your way out
with your only small knife
There will be more death and destruction
than you expected
and ogres all your own as well
Good things die
and every bridge you cross
will exact a toll
You must renounce and escape again and again even
things you love or are comforted by
Turn a deaf ear to being told you can't do this or
do this an
d no more for you have no tools
no strength, no time
Compliance will not conquer your enemy
Being nice will draw leeches that
must be clawed off by force
Exchange timid teachers
for wild ones and around those
guard yourself
Learn to separate seeds from soil
needles from stems
poison from water
not to prove your worth to those you left behind
but to shiver into
The story that awaits you
The Mute Swans
It isn't true that we never speak
Doesn't our name sing?
Do we not love our children,
our little lullabies?
We have never returned home for
the things we've forgotten
landed on windowsills or tapped
on the windows, all of which
would be ill fortune