The Snow Maiden

 She asks herself if it was cold--

it was. She was.

She was cold to him,

but was it so wrong?

The frost in the air

from her words 

was all she had

to numb the pain

of her saying them,

and with anything else,

she might melt.

Sometimes it looks like a wave

 Sometimes hope looks like a wave

beginning slowly, far from shore,

but swelling as it comes--

impossible to ignore.

Sometimes it looks like the Tower card,

lighting flashing and 

falsehood crashing.

Sometimes it looks like the only way

for hands that work

and feet that pray.

Sometimes it starts with dissatisfaction

that turns into a tide

of powerful action. 

Sometimes hope is what must carry you--

but it will take more

to see things through. 

But that change will start

with a wave.

Seeing the Rabbit

 The instinct is in there,

still,

like muscle memory,

no tension,

just moving like

an arrow in flight.

A flick of a switch,

and I'm in gear,

chasing the movement

of something I did not need

to be taught 

to run after;

just as simple as a greyhound

responding to something

in my blood. 

You smile,

and I have seen

the rabbit.

I need to stretch my legs.

Atalanta

 When the flash of gold

rolled into her path

she flashed back to the

way her feet moved

slower on the rolling timbers

above a wide dark sea

and stopped despite

her former resolve,

the taste of a quest

associated in her mind

with that shiny aura

and her known examples of men

that were not so bad,

after all.

Consolation

 I won't try words

where only time

can only barely

mend the ache

or throw a silver lining

under the tarnished

sky, but I am here

to listen if

only to your silences

and sit with the 

part of you that

needs someone

when the rest of

you wants to be

alone and

chase the storm

that has found you.

Protective

 The loyal hound of my thought follows you,

(though you never called for it). 

Not to spy,

not too close, just curious where you might go,

wondering if you wanted company--

that sort of thing. 

It isn't much.

My heart wants to protect you

like the glass of a lantern

that lets in air but shuts out

an extinguishing breeze--

I think these things but freeze

before I could say them aloud.

It's both not a lot

and seems like too much.

I can't protect you

from time, 

or care,

or loss

but trust you are safe

from me.

Familiar Stranger

 Every grief becomes its own creature,

a familiar stranger, 

individual as a fingerprint,

independent as it comes and goes.

It cries in the morning

like a baby

and aches and groans at night

like an old wound.

It wanders in unexpected

with the face you know,

but sometimes it just sits

unseen and

you sit with it, 

sharing the memories of what was

and the future things that will not

be.

It's nothing to fear.