Dust
I was on my last go round when I saw the form
of a spectral maiden with a face forlorn
She swished on by
and was never seen again
This was no dream
It was deep winter in Vermont
and I could hear the howling dogs
The cracking wind snapped branches back
and Helen’s brother handsome Jack
was in the picture but was hardly clear
It was so late, so drear, so cold
A knife held in my frozen glove
I wished that I had never come
I was confused, beset, past sight
There was no light. no place to rest
I did not know why I was there
or if I ever could escape
Let me now set the scene again
The frigid part is true I vouch
The State Police were surely there
I was alone that part is so
But Jack — was he — I do not know
The darkness was as never seen
and Helen did not stay with me
I had a house that someone owned
The police came I was unknown
I never knew what I desired
but beauty always caught my eye
I saw it where nobody did
and where it caught all passing by
Helen was surely one of these
I counted myself fortune-blessed
and fell into her narrative
making it mine and braving cold
there then in deepest Ohio
I never knew her private thoughts
her fears, her hidden mysteries
I did not ask, I did not probe
Who was I then? I still don’t know
I have forgotten all rides home
by plane or car
or even how I paid for things
I had no magnet pulling me
to field or forest road or waterway
or thought of what might be to come
I only know everything ends
I am alone there’s no one in or out
She is not very far away
Fifty short blocks and then three long
I saw her moving in one time
How wrong I was
the lone outsider all along
Then she consumed my family
All distant vague
Now lost to me
I met her once up on a second floor
and knew on sight what she’d become
Such art as she had once possessed
Was fantasy in me I guessed
I’m stepping back a cliff behind
I’ll feel it with my heel in time
Then I’ll evoke the biting wind
and spin the story once again
+++
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