“We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”
―
Naked before the mirror, her limbs bent in wilful
directions. She was a misshapen tree, bent
by a bomb blast in some forgotten war, misshapen
but surviving in the ruins of a bombed out town
in a ruined land with a name impossible to spell.
Like the victim of a witch’s spell one leg pointed
left, the other pointed right pulling her opposite
ways. Her life was a circle, a gravitational pull
to wayward rotation. Men caught by her centrifugal
spin queued in rotation to see her flicker matchstick
shadows on the bedroom ceiling, flickering
like the wings of a bird in a locked room.
“There is no truth. There is only perception.”
Gustave Flaubert
She held her breath and passed beneath the wishing trees. Their evergreen tips arched across the path to the beach. Kiss Me Quick, Squeeze Me Slow. The sea played out beyond the dunes. The world unraveled an orgy of blues as the red kite spiraled up into the heat. On the horizon, the mist spooled like the edge of dreams. She held her breath and waited for the wind to drop.
The kite shrank to a small dot, vanished. The sky grew dark and stormy like ruffled raven’s wings. Blue eyes and long black hair, her skin was delicate and fair. She began to run, over sharp stones, through thorns, back across the swamp until she tripped on a twisted tree root and fell, into quicksand. She held her breath.
During police interview her mother said, Aye, she was trouble alright. Born unlucky,
that girl.
…from the straight path’, said Red Riding Hood’s mother
as the little girl vanished into the deep dark woods.
Wit is a crooked crone warped by fashion.
(A white hat is least likely to be stolen.)
