Flicking over pages
Bright with gold –
The certainty of the light,
The heritage of those born to
The winning lineage,
All straight lines and shining faces,
Sword-girt, sunlit,
Indomitable,
We sped, too, past the dark,
The depths of the woods,
The unlit caves,
The places where the cold
And dispossessed lure
Innocence to be consumed,
Transformed into dinner or symbol.
Nothing fit.
We saw only funhouse mirrors
Fracturing us further.
It took a while;
We didn’t see you,
Stepping between the rays of sun
At the forest’s edge;
Standing on a bridge
(or under it);
Inhabiting the banks
Of the pond.
We saw you transform –
Small to large, smooth to hairy,
Vulnerable to scaly.
We were taken in by the suggestion
That only one state was the
True one.
We watched them break the spell,
Return you to your
Rightful shape:
Goose to brother,
Mage to dragon,
Fox to wife.
And we, who loved the liminal,
Found our eyes drawn, repeatedly, to you
Who, settling, unsettled us.
And, decades on, we finally re-write,
Breathe easier,
Gift the selkie back her skin
The swan maiden her shift.
The faun runs again in dappled shade,
Chain about his slender neck,
And the frog settles into the
Churning cool of the Springtime lilypond,
Raising his voice in chorus for a while
(just for a while),
Astride the twilight margins,
Until the palace beckons once again.
I’ve already reached the point where I’m asking for prompts from anyone nearby. In this case, my partner, clearly casting an eye about the room, said
frog(
did you look at the stuffed frog on the bookcase?
Shh!). This is where my brain went.
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