Gather. Discover. Cultivate.
A string of taillights threading between shadow
trees of a ghost forest.
A mountain of dirt higher than the fire truck
ladder
can reach.
The remains of a wall. It fell against the sound
we cursed, the sound
that turned out to be
a lullaby
after all.
Light slips wet around
a thread silvering
the fringes then kicks off
to flight, there like riches
then gone. Not so fast
as months ago
when gleam was hint
alone of buried vein
and I had to burrow
my fingers to the root to find
the creeping splay
of ore, that fine white web
fanning out
its promise
of more.
Coiled as tight
as scrolls into follicle
each precious strand
an imaginal disk
containing one embryonic
fragment of the crone
I will become. If I am lucky
enough to catch in my silk
a glimpse
of the light an early February
dusk sees fit to fling
at my head in the liquid bend
of an atrium
window, fortune unfurls
as thin as Chinese paper. Her dim edge
peels slightly from the me
I am already leaving behind
and I see how tomorrow
and her progeny
will walk me
backwards and blind
through the pool Ponce de Leon
did in fact find but failed
as all of us do
(until wing, until lift)
to recognize metmorphosis
as far preferable to crysalid
to say nothing of larval
eternity.
Closer still
that quiet roar, age
prods me to step
under the crystal shower
and while I shiver
there, weaves for me
a crown
from ribbons
of ice.
The brooch must contain traces
of her. In the solder bearing glass
to wing, a bit of cell, a fleck of skin
resides, this amulet is her
as much as mine.
The butterfly falls open
in my palm.
By caress and incantation
the jinn unfurls from brass
antenna and twines around
my naked face
planting one kiss then another
dozen the way she did, her powdered cheeks
fluttering, alight
until I squirmed from the onslaught
of an affection,
so much like thirst.
“I know you love me,” she would say
on her way into the hall, closing
the door on fleeting dusk, my visit
in that blink of summer never long enough to probe
under folded silk slips and kidskin gloves
to unearth each rose bead, each hidden leaf
of virgin jade. I loved her in return,
I suppose (as if a child has any notion
of the magnitude of such a claim). She told me I did
so this is how I know
that when the jeweled pin
pierces the wrap at my breast, she is
what thrums there
drawing nectar from the pistil
still, but with all the latent force
of flight.
Shannon E. Williams 