debt repayment: atropinesulfate

[apiphile]

Poem #2. I now owe one more poem, and four stories, to various people.

Waiting for the Princess

I heard about a girl who could weave
between her fingers the picture of
anything the world had represented;
a photographer of threads, though back
in those days it was witchraft that
trapped the soul in strands of gold.

I heard of a girl who kept a wolf warm
by wrapping it in her skin, and everywhere
the woman's feet went, she carried that
gold-eyed, quick-trotting beast within her;
please, believe me, I do not speak in metaphor -
I loved a girl who was a wolf. I mean, I knew her.

I heard girl who sang like the angels
whom, it turns out, have voices like crows
ragged and hoarse with praise, sarcastic
in their adulation, but sincere; her song
a lament of absences which could not be undone,
Mine the sad echo of acknowledgement.