A poem of fear. I don't always like the way my imagination takes me.

Encounter
(Warner Park, late September)

It is mostly illusion, she said,
(The doe frozen at the crest of the hill)
a figment of your human longing:
twilight before, sweet sunset behind,
my eyes sad looking into your own.
Perhaps I really look over your shoulder.
I’ve taken four and half steps to the east,
the crest actually lying above where I stand
more than a quarter way down.

I like perspective puzzles, I answered,
opening boxes in imaginative ways.
You don’t know what you are saying,
she sighed, it’s nothing to you if the grass
flourishes here. What care you if your coat
has not thickened this year, or if the rain wets
you gently as you walk through the park, or
if the clouds having their own reasons, it
holds off for many more days?

A boon, then, I offered, I’ve found you
a clearing, a bower, circled with delicate
flowers of white; the green boughs dipping
tenderly over, like mothers who shelter
their offspring. The grass there, I’m sure,
grows thicker than on any hillside.
There, fairies must dance in the twilight;
room only for them and two creatures like
us; or two who in all the world wide know
each other on sight, take each other to heart:
there two can find solace.

You still choose perspective, she told me.
I’ve known that bower longer than I have
known life, passed down in my blood from
my mother. You speak as humans can afford to
see, leaving songs behind you in the dusk of
days like this one. You can’t see the yellow in the
tops of the trees, the pussy willow browning.
The fairies vacated three summers ago, gallant
surrender of homes that they fought for,
where fire ants now take particular delight
to hide in the cushion-soft grass.

Come closer, I said, a pretty thing you are
And kindred to me as a woman.
Men have always loved me, she answered.
When I step from the trees, each thinks that
only he has discovered me: skin he calls velvet,
eyes maiden-soft. Lovely one, they all say,
what man could look on you and harm you?
I stood long over my mother; I tasted her blood.
The man-lover’s bullet passed clean through
her body, left her teats full of milk for the fawn
hidden in browning leaves, mere steps away. He
died before days had passed, though I forced
his lips to my empty nipples, though I fed him
often with my own life’s-blood.

Why do you tell me such things? I asked her.
I can”t take you home to protect you, your beauty
tied to your freedom, to suffocate quick in my world.
She whispered, Nor would I choose to go with you,
to streets where sirens serve as reminders. I tell you,
for you have discovered the bower; you’ve called the
fairies out of their hiding, driven the fire ants away.
You believe that your coat is thick enough; that
the winter will stay a mild one this year.
Because the shadows whisper sweet safety,
already in your dreaming mind you have brought
him there; you have lain down before him, eyes
trusting, although you know that he aims for your
heart. My sister. You have placed the arrow in his hand.

Sandra Smith Hutchins, 2002


posted by Sandy at 3:25 PM