Once upon a mountaintop
above the cloudy seas
with burning jewels, wind-woven chants
and scent of sun-glad trees
a child discerned her destiny.
And so she descended the granite slopes
to a cottage small and remote
where humble parents with bent, gray heads
clad her in linen and wool
taught her to garden and watched her grow.
A prince’s love lured her away
in a chariot rusty but just
to a colder place outside the gates
where they labored in shadowy mills
till she and her children fell blue and ill.
Evenings the demons came
to taunt and offer escape she took
their cups brought sleep and shrieking dreams
that blackened and broke the shell
of her heart. The prince could only weep.
But he planted a seed that eventually flamed
fanned by a far-off breeze and
memories of music re-grew by notes
and colored her fingers free
to weave a mat of magic reeds
to carry her people above the dark
and icy pools of woe and up
the vertical walls and back
to citrus air and jeweled rays
plumed goddesses and song.
You’ll say, “So what?” and well you may
there’s nothing here that’s new.
And yet this slip of silk will help
begin a braid to win again the
feathered thing that flew.
Marianne Taylor is a bookseller at Powell’s on Burnside where she manages the sales floor in the Blue, Gold, and Green rooms. In a previous life she taught literature and creative writing at a Midwestern college, and her poetry has been published widely in national journals and anthologies. She once served as Poet Laureate of her former small town, but for the past three years she’s been trying to find her way around Portland.