I.

Her hair is not hair but a bonnet
of crow feathers, says one.
He knows this, has seen her traipsing
when dark has crept into the swamps,
the sickly sweet scent of decaying lilies
rising between bared branches and stars.

Another has glimpsed her too
in the breath of an owl wing
farther north still, her beauty
the beauty of borealis,
her voice the haunting shrill
of loons in the mountains.

Young men with dim headlights
turned on the lake, sharing
ripe embers and laughter
pause in their carefree self-
exile to stare; not bear hide
but woman, her feet narrow
on the water.

The Half-moon reveals her,
unearthly eyes glimpsed
and lost again.

The youths do not speak of this
cold, shared occurrence.
Nervous coughing, a quick peal
of tires before darkness
and silence descend again.



II.

She has drawn her first true slave
here by the lake. He is not youthful
but he sits studious, beardless on a bed
of small colored pebbles, tongues
of water inching upon his toes,
brow bent over a lens. He waits.
She will come. She must come.
He holds his dreams suspended
hardly breathing, hardly daring
to reach emaciated fingers toward
ambiguous half-shadowed dawns.
If he can only capture her...