when rage burned her
it burned white hot,
but left behind,
charred walls, dessicated
bridges,
and hollow eerie naves.
her despair had flamed and died,
leaving her in white ,pure quaker
ash.
she felt at home, and yet alone,
a fact as observed as neither
good nor bad,
just a thing
and learned to spread herself
about
but not too thin.
The walled garden,
was now hers alone:
it's walls still there
but delicate in her aftermath;
the fruit trees, raspberries,
the brambles and the bees,
and her new box hedge,
delineating borders between
witchy herbs,
showed form and growth and
promise.
White bloused arms
soon browned by soil immersion
(a spectrum in coffee
from fingertip to shoulders)
and calmed by earth,
grew up her limbs
and filled the gaps
where dry burned wood,
the spill from brother's loss,
had been.
She broadcast thoughts again
to test the ether,
to feel the air
to search out hope,
an antithesis to care,
and found less barriers to her
thought,
less impedance to her curious
impiety.
A wave of empathy
radiated as a pebble's splash,
and the first within its
expanding quaker circle mind
were the three Ravens, who
suddenly made sense.
Not just their logic could be
shared,
but all their senses,
now augmenting hers:
sharper eyes,
the taste of wind and weather in
their beaks,
alfresco sensitivity to season's
change,
as well some other things:
the unexpected avian indignities
of
a pinion feather broke,
a well deserved soaking from a
pail,
from housewife guarding fresh
cooked pies
from greedy beady eyes and beaks.
At this serendipity she squealed
and squawked,
and flapped in glee around the
house.
The valley's borders,
with their help,
became softer,
and the harsh edges of
unknown/known
became as inspiration once again.
No harsh edges to their land
("her" land was still a
dagger through her tongue)
but a merging/gliding in and out
as Greenvalley once again
faced the outside world;
Swirling and ebbing
in dreams and temporal confusion,
the in and out of verse and life,
all sat well for her,
within this cusp,
and a million trillion
possibilities of change
from smallest leaf to juggernaut,
were watched and accepted without
fear,
but envied still was he,
who had found and sought
one single door.
She watched the valley easier
now,
and loved to see a blurring in
the woods,
as a poet from another land
walked in and peered
but did not always see.
Calm within herself, the valley
warmed
and visitors started to return:
mainly down the lane at first
for eggs and butter
and her healing hands,
even just to chat.
At dusk she still set patrols
of herself and Ravens at the
forest edge,
bird eyes and hers,
hazel and obscure.
hers was curiousity personified,
unmodified by grief,
but saw no movement of great
import
until....
Unclear at first
appearing over many days,
though when in focus seemed as if
they always were
and always had been there.
She saw Ardent Wolf again, in
winters coat,
on summer green
trailing garlands of white
flowers,
orange blossom and white rose,
towards a clearing in her woods,
where oak carved bed
and floating gauze of this four
poster's veils,
waved as willow saplings in a
summer mist,.
Although everywhere was hung with
white,
glazed in blossoms spindrift and
heat haze,
the background palate was gnarly,
green
fecund , musty, and gladly
strange
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