WOOD-WOMAN

 

I am Yeats’s wood-woman

Wandering the woods

Dressed in black

Mourning the loss

Of my lover who

Was changed into a

Blue-eyed hawk

The wood is small

4.4 MOL acres now

Trapped between 

A noisy highway with

4-stroke motorcycle engines

Sounding like riding lawn mowers

Bass-lines booming from car stereos

Slicing through my head

Alone, but not wishing

I am dead

Swamp shrinking but no longer care

Too many birds and animals

Screeching out death cries

As habitat no longer supports

What once was a city oasis

And more encroachers on my

Once-quiet dirt road

Look at me with scorn

"My dad says you’re a witch"

The neighbor’s son sneers

Mirroring Salem, I think, they covet

The two lots with a bayou view

They want to burn me for my earth

I am alone in my black dress

But like my one-time lover

The blue-eyed hawk

I too have wings

Cosmically, we will be a pair

And unlike Yeats’s women

My beauty was not folded in dismay

Because the black dress

Is discarded each moonlit night

Revealing my true color

I am the fiery red phoenix

Rising from the ashes of despair…

 

© Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: Sundown Live Oak

Based on a few lines from William Butler Yeats’s

UNDER THE MOON