they appear
by stealth
and disappear.
They shift into vision —
glimpse of antlers,
dark tails,
and then gone,
the air empty.
In the wetlands
we find a print
crimped in mud,
weighted by a rack.
I believe in them:
mottled bodies
not quite formed
in mist
then gone
before rain clouds
drop over us all.
— Denise Low
Dear Magic
ReplyDeleteWhat is a soul if not an invisible wake
From a boat nobody can prove exists
On a river of mist and dark clouds?
I was at a carnival when I saw souls
Lining up by a man who was guessing
Weight for a dollar with a butcher’s scale.
They wore the shoes of nurses
Who caught amputated limbs
In World War II, their angel wings
And lifejackets down around their knees,
Which were bruised from kneeling.
The barker was robbing them blind,
Winking to a woman who could have
Been Mary except for the tattoos.
Later she rode through a ring of fire
On a dirt bike. They had an inside joke
They kept giggling about, probably
Some debauchery of the Carney underworld.
On the trip home, a buck running along
Side the car was gone so quickly
It was like it was never there.
Its scared eyes told of a life of deception,
The land wet with rain pulled up from Lethe
By clouds that could shape-shift into anything.
Everything’s a big secret in the world
Of phantasmagorical presentations and possibility.
Just go to the graveyard and ask around.
Fun. I like the translation of images into another toolkit of language. Let me know if you can publish this anywhere. Deer Woman is a major allusion here, and you translate that to Mary. Great! Denise
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