Tuesday, October 31, 2017

'The Pact': A poem from The Fetch for Hallowe'en


                                    The Pact

A secret place was all the note said
of where to meet. I chose the woods I walked
the time I lost the key to my house,
returning to find a stranger asleep
on my bed, who woke to say sorry, he got tired
while waiting. Since then I’ve been writing,
letting the phone ring, dropping my friends.
The work grew like a child between
my daylight hours, a nine-month seal
of shared blood, melted in the wax
of a waning flame that tapered to a scrawl
I knew as mine, telling me go tonight.

The figure in liquid silhouette
stepped from the sky between a symmetry
of silver birch, quiet as the morning star.
Held in the split and dawn-red eyes
I felt the kiss of a voice on my throat
sing through my skin with the touch of the air.
I don’t know how long I was weightless
in the promise of those words. They
thinned to silence as the sky paled.
I stretched in the darkened sun, mindful
of what would be waiting in my empty house,
whether it would return this greater loss.


from The Fetch (Nine Arches Press, 2016)






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