[The Hag by artist Iain Lowe, as seen at pagannews.com]
I.
She
stood
at the top
of the dunes,
looking out
to sea,
a tall staff
in her left hand,
the wind blowing back
her long and tangled hair,
cape billowing
like it might
suddenly
take wing.
The skies were gray
and lowering
in spring storm,
the pounding
of the sea
so loud
and wild,
the only other sound
she could hear
was her own
triumphant,
beating
heart.
This was her
very first day
in a new land,
and yet she knew
she had
at last
come home.
II.
The day
she left
the sea
behind,
she left
her spirit
perched
in the branches
of Grandmother Cedar,
for safe-keeping,
for she
hoped
and dreamed
and dreamed
one day
she would
be back.
III.
Now,
she hopes,
perhaps
perhaps
in some
alternate
universe,
she's living
somewhere
the life
she might
have had,
the life
she might
have had,
in a one-room cabin
off the grid,
at the edge
of the forest,
the sea
lapping at
her front door,
and
nothing
man-made
within sight or sound
for twenty miles
or more.
Wolves
patrol
these forests,
and eagles
sing
her mornings awake.
Sunrise
and
sunset
bookend
day
after
perfect
peaceful
day,
and the
somnolent
song of the sea
lulls both
her waking
and
her sleeping
hours.
hours.
Here
some part of her
will perhaps
live out
her final days,
in deep
wilderness,
where
she
the most
belongs.
Hmmmmmmm. I started this for Poets United's Think Tank prompt: She. But think it might also do for Real Toad's prompt, to take something from An Old Man and the Sea and write a poem. Two birds with one stone!
