Then

Then, he held me there as if stunned, the figure who had appeared saying
this is the edge between what is and what is not.

On one side was the forest in all its complex depth and verdancy,
on the other side stretched the field, a wide field full of emptiness

where memory was hidden among the grasses, each day of the past moving
like small winds there among the tall grasses.

And therefore I chose, leaving behind what was supposed to be left behind—

and grasped his luminous robe to follow, without a question,
across the transition zone into the old growth forest with its wing sounds.

I might have been the story that wasn't told-- of the woman who left her home
without looking back-- changing forever what happened after.

I trusted only in that spectral figure who moved, with such grace, ahead of me
into the dark evergreens, and the door of their branches closed behind us.

Copyright © 2009 Patricia Fargnoli All rights reserved
from Then, Something
Tupelo Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission