She beats high, and burns,
this witch they follow smiling,
laughing in the face of pain,
bright scars on display.
Who better than these conspirators
to chase the clouds away,
enshrine her like a crystal,
peer through her to a cradle
of love in ashes, where terror blows the coals.
They are the royal we and yet they dream
in the hunched posture
of children half their god-bedazzled age.
Each one shines like an underwater bulb,
a jellyfish chorus-line blinking Ego,
a soft rocking of failing lights,
vulnerable in their hutch of whispers.
Robbers all, no whit the fallen standards,
locusts on the wing to darken the west,
the valley’s familiar bowl
corked and photographed,
labeled 19th c.,
and filed with the letters of a
blueblood’s boundless adulteries.
Wreckage rhymes with amethyst,
a huntress white among the wolves,
the loud campsite one can see
clearly in the shocking pictures,
and somewhere, tented, ambition’s
sash dripping with blood.
Suffer the vandals and arsonists
to come unto the tent, the blue-
eyed virago will test them one by one.
Those that fail will be given
a full moon’s start, pursuit
will be appropriately delayed.
Her vest is velvet,
her blouse pure snow,
the rifle barrel high as her shoulder.
No wonder the natives
spelled her name wrong,
wanting no deeper dealings
with a witch.
The carcasses piled as the rains
came on, up the valley
like a starling flock,
reminding the hunting party of
Mongolian nights on Hampstead Heath.
For those she lays a trembling finger on,
the reward’s a dream worth falling for.