his first spring
by Sandi Leibowitz
he pauses
—that grey sea’s sole
dark driftwood—
picks one
in her remembrance
if only, he thinks,
it were a field of poppies
imagines red skirts of poppies
amid the long-legged wheat
imagines Her running,
head tumbled back and mouth
so open, red
if only
idly twists the petals free
strewing their grey ghosts
behind him like a trail of seeds
as he heads home
ascends the obsidian throne
looks out onto the black, burnt halls
the ranks of courtiers
servile and unbeautiful
and thinks for the first time,
so this is hell
* * *
Sandi Leibowitz is a school librarian, classically trained singer and native New Yorker. Her speculative poetry and fiction appear in Mythic Delirium, Pantheon Magazine, Liminality, Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year 5 and other magazines and anthologies. She has followed in the footsteps of medieval pilgrims traveling from southern France to Santiago de Compostela, sailed across the Rio Grande in a hot-air balloon and visited with Arthur in Avalon. She invites you to visit her at her web site, "In the Raven's Wood," at www.sandileibowitz.com.
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