Sally Alter

Schreiner University

Kerrville, TX

Stone-faced

in Vico,

exhausted scholars are piecing together

shreds of letters

when the shock of excitement rattles the door.

Blackadder coils

his iron-grey hair on twisted finger.

He is learning to scry

through heaps of Ashes –

Melusina –

book-marked,

on jeering note,

Cropped and spliced through fairy past

voluminous piles of correspondence.

Wax lips sealed,

Dolls are crimped

like fallen angels guarding their Letters

on Egg-white beds

in a civet fog

all gloom and glisten.

A web of lies,

the size of shadows, binds

the solitary husband

to wedded wife

all Persian plum,

Himalayan pine,

and Judus tree,

trapped between the thorny Gorse.

Bony hands of black-gloved lady,

Blanched with grief

and sunk with Stones –

Swammerdam –

over the edge with madness.

Unnumbered peacocks

give shrieking cries

with Serpent tongues,

sharp Letters fly on lapis waves

now solid with feathers.

Standing Stones

gaunt and pocked,

mock the daughters

of kings and druids.

Standing stiff

in weeds and weather,

Menhirs, Dolmens, Coits,

crepuscular

with Runic letters.

The Childe, gold-skinned

in inner castle

plays with Ashes

in rosy slippers.

A dancing thing, as safe as Eggs

in crepe-de-chine,

 whirls on shells of pitted Stones

and Unread Letters.