Gretel with a Twist

Mother, I am bare in a fog-ridden forest.

Only the moon shows tenderness.

Winter will crumple me: weary arms, soiled feet,

tongue of rust. I have a thousand visions:

you ironing a dress; eating

chocolate and honey; the sun drunk

and easy; spring blowing against a raw sky

and storms screaming; someone running as if their

life depended on it.

I hear you cry, Go, go. Take them, will you?

He does, along the sea road with its

stopped ship fast asleep. In this place

of elaborate beauty, it is mostly quiet, except when

the heaven-born wind wags and flaps

the branch he left tied

to a sere white ash. Silence itself is strategy,

a signed language,

gorgeous, fluid in the hands

of those who learned it in childhood.

You know we were never meant

to live here, only to learn relinquished,

forsworn, to grasp with wet hands the cold

metal of life, then find a way to let go.